memerman's latency [3 articles]

Abstract

HIV causes a chronic infection characterized by depletion of CD4+ T lymphocytes and the development of opportunistic infections. Despite drugs that inhibit viral spread, HIV infection has been difficult to cure because of uncharacterized reservoirs of infected cells that are resistant to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and the immune response. Here we used CD34+ cells from infected people as well as in vitro studies of wild-type HIV to show infection and killing of CD34+ multipotent hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs). In ...

Abstract

10.1073/pnas.0804192105 Rapid rebound of plasma viremia in patients after interruption of long-term combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) suggests persistence of low-level replicating cells or rapid reactivation of latently infected cells. To further characterize rebounding virus, we performed extensive longitudinal clonal evolutionary studies of HIV C2-V3-C3 regions and exploited the temporal relationships of rebounding plasma viruses with regard to pretreatment sequences in 20 chronically HIV-1-infected patients having undergone multiple 2-week structured treatment interruptions (STI). Rebounding virus during the short STI was homogeneous, ...

Abstract

HIV-1 latency in resting CD4(+) T cells represents a major barrier to virus eradication in patients on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Eliminating the latent HIV-1 reservoir may require the reactivation of viral gene expression in latently infected cells. Most approaches for reactivating latent HIV-1 require nonspecific T cell activation, which has potential toxicity. To identify factors for reactivating latent HIV-1 without inducing global T cell activation, we performed a previously undescribed unbiased screen for genes that could activate transcription from ...