TAG HIV Basic Science, Vaccines, and Cure Project Blog

By Richard Jefferys, Project Director at Treatment Action Group (TAG).

recent posts

Category: Innate immunity

  • TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the November 2024 Update

    For November 2024, there were 11 updates to TAG’s listing. We’ve also added the country locations for each of the current trials (previously, site locations were only included in the table in our annual Research Toward a Cure and Immune-Based Therapies Pipeline Report). New Additions Four new clinical trials were identified in registries: Researchers in…

  • TACK Molecules: Sabotaging HIV to Trigger the Death of Virus-Infected Cells

    A newly published review by Lennice Castro and Matthew Daugherty from the University of California San Diego provides a detailed look at a mechanism of cell death that researchers are attempting to exploit in HIV cure research. The mechanism involves certain proteins that can innately sense the presence of components from pathogens (like viruses) inside…

  • Significant Effects of a TLR7 Agonist Plus Broadly Neutralizing Antibody in the SHIV/Macaque Model

    Among the most newsworthy presentations at CROI 2018 earlier this year was Dan Barouch’s description of a study involving a toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) agonist combined with a broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) in SHIV-infected macaques (see contemporary coverage by AIDSMap, i-Base and POZ Magazine). The results have now been published in the journal Nature. The…

  • Recruiting Natural Killer Cells to Target HIV Persistence

    An important goal in HIV cure research is the identification of immune responses that might be induced or enhanced to promote clearance of virus-infected cells. The main focus of this work has been on adaptive immunity—components of the immune system that can specifically recognize HIV, which include CD4 T cells, CD8 T cells, B cells…

  • Targeting Latently Infected Cells via IFITM1

    One of the holy grails in cure research is the discovery of markers that would allow the specific targeting of cells harboring latent HIV. The goal is to be able flag those cells for elimination while sparing their uninfected counterparts. So far, a number of cellular receptors have been identified as being more commonly—but not exclusively—…

  • Therapeutic Vaccination Plus Toll-Like Receptor Stimulation Shows Promise in the SIV Model

    Since the earliest days of HIV research, the idea of trying to enhance immune responses to the virus using therapeutic vaccination has been extensively explored, but with little success. The ability of the virus to compromise CD4 T cells, which would normally coordinate antiviral immunity, may be one contributor to the generally disappointing results. Virus-induced…

  • Applying the Brakes to Type 1 Interferons in HIV Infection

    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…

  • Attempt to Oversell New Findings on Pyroptosis in HIV Infection Prompts Headline Debacle

    A new open access paper from the laboratory of Warner Greene at the Gladstone Institutes was published online yesterday in the journal Cell Reports, accompanied by a poorly conceived press release that prompted some of the most egregiously inaccurate media headlines about HIV research in recent history.  The study, led by Nicole Galloway and Gilad…

  • Innate Immunity and HIV DNA Declines in Panobinostat Recipients

    Results from a phase I trial of the candidate latency reversing agent panobinostat were published last year in The Lancet HIV (see blog post from November 2014). The paper notes that in an exploratory analysis, a subset of four (out of a total of 15) participants experienced a significant decline in cell-associated HIV DNA levels of…

  • Souped-Up IL-15 Sparks Natural Killer Cell Activity Against HIV

    The cytokine interleukin-15 (IL-15) can exert a range of effects on the immune system, but is particularly important for promoting the proliferation and function of natural killer (NK) cells and CD8 T cells. Some observational studies in HIV have suggested salutary effects of higher IL-15 levels, in one case finding an association with delayed viral load…