Escape of HIV-1 from a small molecule CCR5 inhibitor is not associated with a fitness loss.

ABSTRACT: Fitness is a parameter used to quantify how well an organism adapts to its environment; in the present study, fitness is a measure of how well strains of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replicate in tissue culture. When HIV-1 develops resistance in vitro or in vivo to antiretroviral drugs such as reverse transcriptase or protease inhibitors, its fitness is often impaired. Here, we have investigated whether the development of resistance in vitro to a small molecule CCR5 inhibitor, AD101, has an associated fitness cost. To do this, we developed a growth-competition assay involving dual infections with molecularly cloned viruses that are essentially isogenic outside the env genes under study. Real-time TaqMan quantitative PCR (QPCR) was used to quantify each competing virus indivi

SUBMITTER: Anastassopoulou CG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1885273 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature