Advances toward Curing HIV-1 Infection in Tissue Reservoirs

A disease of more than 39.6 million people worldwide, HIV-1 Infection has no curative therapy. To date, one man has achieved a sterile cure, with millions more hoping to avoid the potential pitfalls of lifelong antiretroviral therapy and Other HIV-related disorders, including neurocognitive decline. Recent developments in immunotherapies and gene therapies provide renewed hope in advancing efforts toward a sterilizing or functional cure. On the horizon is research concentrated in multiple separate but potentially complementary domains: vaccine research, viral transcript editing, T-cell effector response targeting including checkpoint inhibitors, and gene editing. Here, we review the concept of targeting the HIV-1 tissue reservoirs, with an emphasis on the central nervous system, and describe relevant new work in functional cure research and strategies for HIV-1 eradication.

CRISPR/Cas9; HIV-1; brain; checkpoint inhibitors; functional cure; latency; reservoir.