Science subjournal: only 1.7% of the whole HIV-1 protovirus in the induced memory T cell subpopulation released the virus with replication ability

February 5, 2020 / Biovalley BIOON / - -- the main obstacle to curing HIV-1 infection is the HIV-1 virus library that lurks in static CD4 + T cells, which enables the virus to persist in a form that makes the immune system undetectable or unaffected by antiretroviral drugs (Art) A cure strategy involves inducing viral gene expression so that latent infected T cells can be eliminated It has been suggested that latent HIV-1 may be rich in specific CD4 + T cell subsets, which will allow latent reversal drugs to target them more specifically At present, it is not clear whether the latent HIV-1 virus library mainly exists in the specific subpopulation of CD4 + T cells, which may affect the understanding of the stability of the HIV-1 virus library and the development of therapeutic therapy Recent studies have shown that the proliferation of CD4 + T cells infected with HIV-1 is the main factor for the generation and persistence of this latent HIV-1 virus library, and the latent infected T cells that have clonal expansion in vivo can proliferate in vitro without producing virus particles When the immune cells suffering from latent HIV infection are reactivated, the cells begin to produce HIV particles (red), which sprout and release from the cells (blue), pictured in NIAID In some CD4 + memory T cell subsets, HIV-1 provirus may be in a deeper latent state, which makes these cells proliferate without producing viral protein, thus avoiding immune clearance To assess this possibility, in a new study, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other research institutions in the United States used a multiple stimulation virus growth test to test the static initial CD4 + T cells, central memory CD4 + T cells (TCM), transitional memory CD4 + T cells (TTM) and effective memory CD4 in vitro from 10 HIV-1 infected people receiving ART treatment+ T cells (TEM) were cultured Relevant research results were published in the Journal of Science Translational Medicine on January 29, 2020 The title of the paper is "different human resting memory CD4 + T cell subsets show similar low inductivity of late HIV-1 viruses" On average, in all T cell subsets, only 1.7% of the complete HIV-1 proviruses transcribe the viral genes and release the replication capable viruses after stimulation of these cells They did not find a complete or inducible continuous enrichment of proviruses in any T cell subsets In addition, they observed that these typical subsets of memory T cells had significant plasticity after activation in vitro, and the ability to induce the release of infectious virus was significantly different between people This finding complicates the vision of HIV-1 targeted therapy based on memory T cell subsets (bio Com) reference: kyungyoon J Kwon et al Different human resting memory CD4 + T cell subsets show similar low inductivity of late HIV-1 viruses Science Translational Medicine, 2020, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aax6795