IGF::OT::IGF THE MICROVOA: ENHANCING THE VIRAL OUTGROWTH ASSAY (VOA) WITH MICROTECHNOLOGY

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One of the most significant hurdles to overcome in evaluating strategies to cure HIV infection is the lack of a simple method for quantifying changes in the size of the latent reservoir of replication-competent HIV in resting CD4+ memory T cells in individuals on highly effective antiretroviral therapy. Most of the HIV DNA in these cells represents defective virus; less than 0.01% of highly purified resting CD4 cells harbor replication-competent provirus. As a result, PCR-based methods tend to over-estimate the size of the reservoir and do not correlate with the number of cells producing functional virus in a viral outgrowth assay. However, viral outgrowth assays are labor-intensive and require large volumes of blood. The goal of this project is to design a high-throughput assay platform that can be used to reproducibly quantify changes in the size of the replication-competent latent HIV reservoir in resting CD4+ memory T cells isolated from individuals on highly effective antiretroviral therapy.