Current HIV Research - Volume 15, Issue 1, 2017

Background: Vacc-4x is a candidate therapeutic vaccine consisting of 4 modified peptides based on conserved regions of HIV-1 p24Gag. Vacc4x has been shown to induce long term cellular immunity in immunized infected individuals resulting a reduction in viral load on treatment interruption. Objective: Vacc-4x peptides are modified. In this study the effect of modification on uptake of the peptides into PBMC, their subsequent Read More

Background: Sterile alpha motif and histidine aspartate domain containing deoxynucleoside triphosphate triphosphohydrolase 1 (SAMHD1) is one of the novel restriction factors that potently supresses HIV-1 infection in myeloid cells at an early stage in the viral replication cycle. SAMHD1 activity is blocked by the action of viral accessory protein x (Vpx), which targets and recruits SAMHD1 for proteasomal degradation, in the SIVsm/ Read More

Background: The identification of immunogens is crucial for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) vaccine development. In our previous study, we demonstrated that HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein mutants based on the equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) attenuated vaccine enhance immunogenicity, both for DNA immunization alone and as a combined DNA prime-vaccinia boost immunization. An RV144 clinical trial ha Read More

Background: It is not clear about the possible evolutionary changes of the three predominant strains of HIV-1 in China over the course of the epidemic. Envelope (env) gene of HIV-1 is a good target for this evolutionary pressure for its enriched epitopes. Methods: We collected 159 full or part of env sequences sampled between 1997 and 2010 from database of China, we calculated the genetic distance, detected the positi Read More

Background: South Africa’s Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) program has been implemented for over ten years. This has led to a considerable reduction in mother-to-child transmissions. In 2010, the Northern Cape Province had a 1.4% transmission rate, being the lowest in the country. Objective: To describe the implementation of the PMTCT program in the Franc Read More

Background: HIV-associated lipodystrophy is associated with decreased expression of PPAR-γ in adipose tissue. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) isomers (cis9, trans11 and trans10, cis12) are putative PPAR-γ agonists, but have not previously been investigated in the context of HIVassociated lipodystrophy. Method: 3T3-L1 pre-adipocytes were differentiated in the presence of ritonavir (20 μM as per previous experimental mod Read More

Background: Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been commonly used for HIV treatment. Its main drawbacks like drug resistance and side effects raised researcher’s interest to find new approaches for its treatment. Trimethyl chitosan is one of the drug carriers which has been introduced recently. Materials and Methods: the conjugated atripla-trimethyl chitosan was designed and characterized by zetasizer, AFM Read More

Background: Scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and the growing number of longterm treated patients may favor multi-HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) in resource-limited settings. Understanding the burden of HIVDR with ART-exposure may provide new insights for an effective long-term management of infected patients. Methods: Sixty-six HIV-infected individuals (18 ART-naïve, 24 failing first-line, 24 failing secondline ART Read More