TAG HIV Basic Science, Vaccines, and Cure Project Blog
By Richard Jefferys, Project Director at Treatment Action Group (TAG).
recent posts
- 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
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the October 2025 Update
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the September 2025 Update
Category: Pathogenesis
-
A little over nine years ago I wrote a blog post with this same title, about a widely publicized paper claiming that HIV had become less virulent. Although it's grim to be in the position of pouring cold water on optimistic-sounding scenarios, that paper was based on measuring HIV’s ability to replicate using a laboratory test,…
-
The question of whether HIV infection of macrophages plays an important role in pathogenesis remains controversial and unresolved. For cure researchers, the related question of whether macrophages contribute to viral persistence during antiretroviral therapy is crucial, but also unanswered. Three recent papers describe results from studies designed to shed light on this subject. In the…
-
A news release issued today by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) reports the disappointing news that viral load has rebounded in the child in Mississippi who had been considered possibly cured of HIV infection. The child is now nearly four years of age and HIV had remained undetectable without treatment for…
-
Since posting recently about studies investigating the relevance of the CD4/CD8 ratio in the antiretroviral therapy era, several new papers and presentations have provided more information on the topic. Last week in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens, Sergio Serrano-Villar and colleagues reported evidence that a low CD4/CD8 ratio (less than or equal to 0.4)—despite…
-
In addition to studies covered in prior posts (a possible second pediatric cure case, Sangamo’s gene therapy and limitations of latency-reversing agents), CROI 2014 featured a smorgasbord of presentations related to pathogenesis and cure research. Webcasts of all conference sessions are online, and many posters are now available in PDF format. Brief summaries of some notable studies are…
-
Having recently criticized a widely publicized paper on HIV-induced pyroptosis for not providing much information relating to CCR5-tropic HIV infection, I’m duty bound to highlight a new study that includes some data addressing this topic. Pyroptosis is an inflammatory form of cellular suicide that has been shown by Gilad Doitsh from Warner Greene’s laboratory to result…
-
Elite controller is a term applied to the rare group of HIV-positive individuals who maintain undetectable viral loads in the absence of any treatment. The precise criteria for defining elite controllers often varies from study to study, particularly when it comes to the duration of viral load control. A research group based in the UK…
-
A subset of HIV-positive people who initiate antiretroviral therapy (ART) and achieve suppression of HIV replication experience poor recovery of CD4 T cell numbers. Terms used to describe this subset of individuals include “discordant responders” and “immunological non-responders” (INRs). As yet, there is no universally accepted definition of INRs and a variety of CD4 T…
-
An inversion of the normal ratio between CD4 and CD8 T cells was noted in the very first case reports of individuals with AIDS, before HIV was even identified. Although a number of studies subsequently reported an association between the CD4/CD8 ratio and risk of disease progression, CD4 T cell counts were more extensively researched…
-
Two new papers describing a recently discovered mechanism of CD4 T cell death in HIV infection are receiving extensive press coverage. Both are from the laboratory of Warner Greene at the Gladstone Institutes, and follow up on their prior work published in the journal Cell in 2010. The papers have simultaneously appeared in two high profile journals,…