Towards a Cure: HIV Reservoirs and Strategies to Control Them

Towards a Cure: HIV Reservoirs and Strategies to Control Them: "From 16 to 17 July, immediately prior to the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010), the International AIDS Society held a workshop addressing the critically important subject of moving beyond antiretroviral therapy and addressing HIV persistence. Towards a Cure: HIV Reservoirs and Strategies to Control Them was co-sponsored by the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS), Bundesministirium fur Wissenschaft und Forschung (BMWFa), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Sidaction and Treatment Action Group (TAG). ...

"In the closing session, Daria Hazuda from Merck & Co. reviewed some of the issues in conducting industrial-scale screening of compounds for anti-latency activity. As Hazuda noted, many research teams have identified compounds known as histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors that can prod HIV out of hiding, and a number of the drugs (such as SAHA) already are approved for human use in cancer. Several additional pharmaceutical companies are known to be initiating programs to search for potentially curative drugs.

"Detailed rapporteur summaries from the workshop will soon be available on the AIDS 2010 website, and a meeting summary will be published in the Journal of the IAS. The Thursday conference session “Persistence of HIV Reservoirs” (THAA01) will include some of the abstracts that were presented, and additional background materials and a press release about the workshop will be made available today. Slide presentations will be posted on the workshop website by the end of July.

"A background review outlining the key scientific issues was published in Science on 9 July 2010."