Curing HIV infection: going beyond N=1

Immunology Interest Group Seminar Series The latent reservoir for HIV is a major barrier to curing HIV infection. This talk will discuss recent studies of the mechanism by which the reservoir arises, the mechanism by which it is maintained, and approaches for measuring the reservoir in patients participating in HIV cure trials. Dr. Robert F. Siliciano is a Professor of Medicine and Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1995, his laboratory provided the first demonstration that latently infected memory CD4+ T cells were present in patients with HIV-1 infection. He showed that latently infected cells persist even in patients on prolonged antiretroviral therapy (ART). These studies indicated that eradication of HIV-1 infection with ART alone would never be possible, a finding which led to a fundamental change in the treatment strategy for HIV-1 infection. This latent reservoir is now recognized as the major barrier to curing HIV-1 infection and is the subject of an intense international research effort. Dr. Siliciano ’ s laboratory has gone on to characterize the reservoir and to explore strategies for eradicating it. In addition, Dr. Siliciano has developed a theoretical foundation for understanding the success of ART in controlling HIV-1 replication. Dr. Siliciano graduated from Princeton and received his MD and PhD degrees from Johns Hopkins. After a postdoctoral fellowsh...
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