Progress Towards A Therapeutic HIV Vaccine

Current management of chronic HIV infection is "cART for life". In order to achieve a functional HIV cure, therapeutic vaccination could be an interesting way if it is capable of controlling viral replication without drugs.

A new step is reported by a spanish group (1) using using autologous myeloid dendritic cells (MD-DCs) pulsed with autologous heat-inactivated whole HIV.

Although this blinded placebo-controlles trial did not prevent viremia rebound after cART discontinuation, it showed a significant reduction in viremia levels in the vaccine arm.

Strategies for an HIV Cure

The NIAID Division of AIDS is sponsoring a meeting on “Strategies for an HIV Cure” to be held at the Four Points Sheraton in downtown Washington, DC on November 28-30, 2012. The meeting brings together members of all three NIH-funded Martin Delaney Collaboratories as well as guest speakers and will be open to the public.

Dr Alex Sigal Interview: HIV Persistence Despite ART

Doctor Sigal is the author of 2 recent papers: "Cell-to-cell spread of HIV permits ongoing replication despite antiretroviral therapy" (1) and "As Good As It Gets? The Problem of HIV Persistence despite Antiretroviral Drugs" (2) giving new insights into the mechanisms of HIV persistence during antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Doctor Sigal kindly agreed to answer a few questions on this topic.

Non Human Primate Models for HIV Cure Research

A recent Viewpoint article published in Retrovirology (1) by the Italian group of researchers lead by Andrea Savarino comments on the recent findings of potential functional cures of AIDS in macaque models (2,3) and on a new simian AIDS model that could be interesting to test strategies aimed at HIV eradication or functional cure. We took this opportunity to ask Doctor Savarino to tell us a little bit more about his research plans.