TAG HIV Basic Science, Vaccines, and Cure Project Blog
By Richard Jefferys, Project Director at Treatment Action Group (TAG).
recent posts
- In The News: CAR-T Cells for HIV
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the March 2026 Update
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the February 2026 Update
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the December 2025 and January 2026 Updates
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the November 2025 Update
Category: Immune activation
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The March 2024 revision to TAG’s listing includes 26 updates. The annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place in Denver from March 3-6, and the addition of links to results from HIV cure-related studies presented at the meeting typically makes this the busiest month for changes — hence the delay to this…
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No new HIV cure-related trials or studies have been added to the clinicaltrials.gov registry over the past month. Two trials in the listing have changed status: A study sponsored by the ANRS in France investigating the link between specific immune system genetics (MHC B35/53Bw4TTC2) and post-treatment control of HIV is now open for enrollment. Participants…
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The size of the reservoir of replication-competent HIV that persists in individuals on ART has been described in several studies from North America, but no information has previously been presented from the African continent, where the burden of HIV infection is greatest. A study just published in Clinical Infectious Diseases by Jessica Prodger and colleagues takes…
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The annual Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place in Seattle from February 13th-16th, offering a dizzying parade of new data. Webcasts of presentations and PDF files of posters were rapidly placed online and are accessible via the CROI website. A Fillip for Kick & Kill On the cure research front, the results…
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This week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two independent studies describe results obtained by blocking type 1 interferon signaling pathways in humanized mouse models of chronic HIV infection. The papers are both open access (see Anjie Zhen et al and Liang Cheng et al). Type 1 interferons are cytokines that interact with specific receptors…
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Back in 2012, a paper describing a study of a novel vaccine approach in the SIV/macaque model was published to little fanfare in the open access journal Cell Reports. The brainchild of researcher Jean-Marie Andrieu, the idea behind the vaccine was to turn the traditional approach to immunization on its head: the aim was to suppress…
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Cytokines are a family of proteins that play important roles in immune cell communication. The best-known example is interleukin-2 (IL-2), which is FDA-approved as a therapy for kidney cancer. Many cytokines have been evaluated in HIV infection and one of the latest candidates being considered for human testing is IL-21. Laboratory and animal model research…
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Several recent papers offer perspectives on the possibility of achieving post-treatment control of HIV replication by starting antiretroviral therapy (ART) during acute infection. Interest in this topic has been sharpened by reports about the VISCONTI cohort, a group of individuals in France who all started ART soon after HIV acquisition, maintained treatment for several years,…
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Research has documented that HIV infection is associated with significantly increased scarring damage to lymphoid tissue, termed fibrosis. Fibrosis can be quantified by measuring the deposition of collagen, and the amount of lymphoid tissue fibrosis in HIV-positive people has been shown to correlate directly with CD4 T cell depletion. A paper published toward the end…
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Results from the second clinical trial to test the HDAC inhibitor vorinostat as a latency-reversing agent, first presented at CROI 2013, have now been published in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens. The study design differed from the first trial, involving a longer 14-day dosing period. The results are broadly consistent, with a significant increase in…