Latent HIV infection focus of NIDA’s 2010 Avant-Garde Award

Science Blog: "The long-term persistence of HIV in a latent state in patients treated with HAART prevents the eradication of the disease, and forces patient to remain on HAART for their entire life. At this time, our understanding of how latent HIV infection occurs is basic. Dr. Verdin’s project aims to develop a new single cell technology to examine how HIV latency is established, maintained, and how the virus becomes reactivated, in primary human lymphoid cells. By observing the fate of the virus in single cells, Dr. Verdin hopes to be able to devise novel strategies to eliminate latent HIV infection, or to restrict the latent pool to a size that can be controlled by the immune system."