Novel flow cytometry-based assay for HIV-infected cells

描述（由申请人提供）：艾滋病毒感染的抗逆转录病毒疗法（ART）是医学史上最重要和最迅速的进展之一。然而，尽管ART在限制病毒复制和减缓疾病进程方面是有效的，但如果没有病毒的快速反弹和疾病的进展，ART就不能停止。此外，虽然接受抗逆转录病毒治疗的患者预防了艾滋病，但接受抗逆转录病毒治疗的艾滋病毒感染者发生心血管疾病和神经认知功能下降等重大非艾滋病事件的频率更高，发生年龄也比一般人群更早。最后，疫情规模过大和铺开的障碍 太高，无法有效治疗每一个感染者，以结束这一流行病。因此，我们必须了解艾滋病毒如何在受感染个体中持续存在的机制，以设计新的疗法来根除病毒或功能性治愈患者。理解这一点的第一步是发展测定病毒持久性水平的方法。存在几种测定，但在提供多少信息、它们可以多快地执行、它们有多昂贵以及测量的可变性方面具有严重的限制。我们在这里提出了一种新的方法来检测艾滋病毒感染的细胞在单细胞分辨率使用流式细胞术。这种方法，一旦优化，将提供更多的信息，更快地执行，成本更低，并具有更小的变异性比其他测定HIV水库。我们将优化该检测方法，然后将其应用于了解不同HIV感染受试者组中HIV储库的状态，以评估某些临床上不同的受试者是否具有不同的HIV储库大小、活性或再活化潜力，并开发高通量筛选检测方法，用于评估新疗法以重新激活或杀死潜伏的储库。这一过程将证明该测定法的实用性，突出其可应用的情况，以及传播该测定法供其他人在他们认为合适的情况下使用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV infection is one of the most important and rapid advances in the history of medicine. However, while effective at limiting virus replication and slowing the course of disease, ART cannot be stopped without rapid rebound of virus and progression of disease. In addition, while AIDS is prevented in patients on ART, significant non-AIDS events such as cardiovascular disease and neurocognitive decline occur more frequently and at an earlier age in HIV-infected subjects on ART than in the general population. Finally, the epidemic is too large and the barriers to roll-out too high to effectively treat every infected individual to end the epidemic. It is therefore imperative that we understand the mechanisms of how HIV persists in the infected individual to design novel therapies to eradicate the virus or functionally cure the patient. The first step in tis understanding is the development of assays to measure the level of virus persistence. Several assays exist, but have serious limitations in terms of how much information is provided, how quickly they can be performed, how expensive they are, and how variable the measurement is. We propose here a novel method to detect HIV-infected cells at single cell resolution using flow cytometry. This method, once optimized, will provide more information, be performed more rapidly, cost less, and have less variability than other assays for the measurement of HIV reservoirs. We will optimize this assay and then apply it to understand the state of the HIV reservoir in various groups of HIV-infected subjects to evaluate whether some clinically different subjects may have different sizes, activities, or reactivation potentials of their HIV reservoirs ad also to develop a high-throughput screening assay for the evaluation of novel therapeutics to reactivate or kill the latent reservoir. This process will demonstrate the utility of this assay an highlight situations in which it can be applied as well as disseminate the assay for use by others to apply as they see fit.