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It's a leading research strategy for eliminating HIV from the body: "shock and kill." The idea is to activate the dormant virus from within the immune cells where it hides, then eliminate it. One obstacle has been finding a safe way to wake up the virus. In two complementary Nature papers, researchers now report that they have come closer to that goal. The papers are from researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The papers rely on studies involving two animal models of HIV infection. Each study took a different approach. But both yielded promising results, disrupting viral latency at levels not seen before. That means that the virus came out of its hiding places, even in the presence of antiretroviral drugs that had stopped it from replicating for months. The findings do not represent a cure and follow-up studies in animals, as well as clinical studies in humans, are needed and planned. But the results represent an advance because they could potentially be combined with other approaches directed against the virus, the scientists say.
"If our goal is to cure HIV/AIDS, then we have to disrupt viral latency," says Guido Silvestri, MD, co-senior author of one of the Nature papers. "What we're doing now is a new combination approach that provides unprecedented levels of virus reactivation." Silvestri is interim chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, chief of microbiology and immunology at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and a Georgia Eminent Research Scholar. Past results of latency reversal experiments were not as sustained and extensive, says co-senior author J. Victor Garcia, Ph.D., director of the International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science and professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine....
Origina publications published in Nature (January 22, 2020):
