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Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) Cure Overview

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Forty million people are currently living with HIV-1 and 40,000 people became newly infected with HIV-1 in the United States in 2015, and 2.1 million worldwide. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) represses HIV-1 replication and stops disease progression, allowing infected people to live with the infection. Yet, ART does not eliminate the infection since replication-competent HIV-1 survives in latently infected CD4+ T cells during many years of ART. Resting CD4+ T cells harbor integrated viral genomes and serve as permanent source of de novo infectious viruses. Long-term ART is accompanied with issues including health problems due to chronic drug exposure, expensive cost and stringent compliance requirement. Thus, new strategies to eradicate these viral reservoirs represent an utmost clinical priority.

Our lab identified inhibitor of apoptosis protein antagonists (IAPa), which efficiently reverse HIV-1 latency in resting CD4+ T cells. We also demonstrated that IAPa synergize with immune checkpoint protein inhibitors to reduce HIV-1 loads in blood and tissues of infected humanized mice, suggesting that the combination of two distinct classes of immunomodulatory agents constitutes a promising anti-HIV-1 immunotherapeutic approach with a potential to eliminate viral reservoirs and to provide a cure.

HIV-1 Cure Overview