New Assay Promises to Accelerate HIV Cure Research

HIV is not cured with antiretroviral therapy (ART) because HIV persists in a long-lived reservoir. Current methods to measure the reservoir have substantial limitations. For example, the culture-based virus outgrowth assay, which was used to first demonstrate the HIV reservoir in resting CD4 cells, underestimates the reservoir because not all proviruses are induced to grow. Conversely, measurement of total HIV DNA overestimates the reservoir because >95% of proviruses are defective and would not lead to HIV rebound if ART was stopped. To address these deficiencies, investigators have developed an assay that quantifies intact HIV proviruses.

The investigators evaluated 431 near full HIV genome sequences from 28 people with HIV. They used the …