Zinc-finger-nucleases mediate specific and efficient excision of HIV-1 proviral DNA from infected and latently infected human T cells.

ABSTRACT: HIV-infected individuals currently cannot be completely cured because existing antiviral therapy regimens do not address HIV provirus DNA, flanked by long terminal repeats (LTRs), already integrated into host genome. Here, we present a possible alternative therapeutic approach to specifically and directly mediate deletion of the integrated full-length HIV provirus from infected and latently infected human T cell genomes by using specially designed zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) to target a sequence within the LTR that is well conserved across all clades. We designed and screened one pair of ZFN to target the highly conserved HIV-1 5'-LTR and 3'-LTR DNA sequences, named ZFN-LTR. We found that ZFN-LTR can specifically target and cleave the full-length HIV-1 proviral DNA in several infected and

SUBMITTER: Qu X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3763554 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature