Last week, the 15th annual Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections took place in Boston. The conference website now features open access to webcasts of every session (with the exception of poster discussions) as well as a searchable database of abstracts. In virology, the major highlight involved the identification (by two research groups, one led by Paul Bieniasz and the other by John Guatelli) of a host cell protein involved in HIV replication that belongs to a family called tetherins. In pathogenesis, the depletion of Th17 cells (a subset of CD4 T cells associated with both antimicrobial responses and proinflammatory autoimmune conditions) by HIV emerged a potential contributor to disease progression. Biomedical prevention science struggled with a litany of bad news: HSV-2 suppression using acyclovir failed to reduce HIV transmission, male circumcision was associated with a trend toward increased risk of HIV transmission to female partners (thought related to inadequate time given for healing after the procedure) and current HIV vaccine candidates were hammered by the CROI committee with twin calls for a "back to basics" approach (by Ron Desrosiers and Neal Nathanson).
The AIDSMap website has comprehensive coverage of the meeting. Science has published two complementary pieces (Back to Basics Push as Prevention Struggles and Experts: AIDS Vaccine Research has "Lost Its Way") and Project Inform highlight an intriguing study involving stem cell transplantation to an HIV-infected recipient from a donor lacking CCR5 on their cells (due to the delta32 mutation). This individual has now gone 285 days without antiretroviral treatment, without the return of any detectable HIV DNA or RNA (a PDF of the poster is available online).
Comments