Persistence of virus reservoirs in ART-treated SHIV-infected rhesus macaques after autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant.

ABSTRACT: Despite many advances in AIDS research, a cure for HIV infection remains elusive. Here, we performed autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in three Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Virus (SHIV)-infected, antiretroviral therapy (ART)-treated rhesus macaques (RMs) using HSCs collected prior to infection and compared them to three SHIV-infected, ART-treated, untransplanted control animals to assess the effect of conditioning and autologous HSCT on viral persistence. As expected, ART drastically reduced virus replication, below 100 SHIV-RNA copies per ml of plasma in all animals. After several weeks on ART, experimental RMs received myeloablative total body irradiation (1080 cGy), which resulted in the depletion of 94-99% of circulating CD4+ T-cells, and low to undetectable SH

SUBMITTER: Mavigner M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4177994 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature