Microscope file photo courtesy of © Can Stock Photo Inc. / DarrenBakerMicroscope file photo courtesy of © Can Stock Photo Inc. / DarrenBaker
London

Western researchers find way to coax dormant HIV out of cells

In a move that could dramatically improve the effectiveness of HIV treatment, researchers at Western University have found a way to pull dormant parts of the virus out of cells.

Currently, those living with HIV can manage the virus with treatment and anti-HIV drugs. However, if an HIV-positive individual stops the life-long therapy, dormant aspects of the virus, known as latent reservoir, will rapidly re-emerge. It's the hiding virus that prevents infected people from being cured.

“The aim is to get it all out of dormancy with a targeted punch, so the remaining virus can be killed,” Lead Research Eric Arts, a professor at Western's Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, said in a statement. “Now that we’ve shown that this can be done with patient samples at early HIV disease, the hope is this will lead to targeted cure strategies.”

Researchers studied cells from HIV-positive individuals who are receiving early treatment for the disease. They found by making the latent reservoir visible to the immune system it can be killed by antiretroviral treatment.

“Antiretroviral therapies work by disrupting various aspects of the replication cycle of HIV,” said Jamie Mann, study researcher. “If the virus is not replicating, the drugs can't have an effect on it. By reactivating the virus, we can either inhibit it through antiretroviral therapy or it can be targeted by the body’s immune response.”

The method is the first part of what is known as the 'shock and kill' strategy. Now that researchers can shock the virus out of hiding, the next step will be to determine if they can activate the body’s immune cells to kill it.

The research was done in collaboration with Case Western Reserve University and Imperial College London with funding from the American Foundation of AIDS Research, The National Institutes of Health, and by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The study, “A targeted reactivation of latent HIV-1 using an activator vector in 2 patient samples from acute infection,” was recently published in the journal eBioMedicine.

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