Single nuclei transcriptome profiling in addiction circuitry of the HIV+ brain

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HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) persist in the era of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). HIV latency, and cell-specific expression of HIV transcript in human CNS remains incompletely understood, despite continued high prevalence of HIV-associated neurologic disease and increasing recognition of CNS viral escape in people stably suppressed with cART. Issues of CNS functional deficit are further complicated by the co-registered epidemic of opiate and other substance use disorders (SUD) in people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), as SUD also have profound impact on CNS function, and potentially on HIV latency. Nowhere in the CNS is this more evident than in the neuroanatomic overlap of HIV and SUD in striatonigral dopaminergic circuitry and its cortical projection areas including the anterior cingulate cortex, sites of predilection for functional and neurobiologic disease as well as for increased burden of HIV infection. Accordingly, directly utilizing brain tissues in these regions, from neurologically well-characterized HIV-infected individuals with and without SUD, the goal of this application will be to explore whether HIV signatures in transcriptomes in dopaminergic circuitry i n c l u d i n g c i n g u l a t e t a r g e t s is associated with prospectively monitored neurological status in the years before death and exposure to drug of abuse; (iii) explore HIV expression in potential reservoir cells of the brain, including microglia. The innovative experiments proposed here are expected to offer novel insights into transcriptomic landscapes in specific brain cells and explore potential links between neurogenomic status of the infected brain and neurological and cognitive symptoms and substance abuse. While recognizing the high-risk aspects, these analyses will nevertheless have predictable, high gain benefits in understanding the complex neurobiology underlying HIV-associated CNS disease in PLWHA and SUD.