MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF HIV-1 LATENCY : Nature and Impact of HIV-1 Integration Sites

ISBN-13: 9783639116380 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 116 str.

Yefei Han

Opis

Advances in the treatment of HIV-1 infection withhighly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) havegreatly reduced mortality and changed this fatalinfection into a chronic disease for many. HAART canreduce viremia to below the clinical limit ofdetection. However, eradication of the infection hasnot been achieved. HIV-1 can establish latentinfection in a small pool of resting memory T cellsin which the provirus is stably integrated into thehost genome but not producing viral proteins. Thisstate of latency allows HIV-1 to evade immuneresponses and antiretroviral drugs. Upon cellularactivation, replication-competent viruses can bequickly released from the latent reservoir torekindle the infection. Because of its extremely slowdecay rate, the latent reservoir is a major barrierto curing HIV-1 infection. Dr. Han s dissertationexplored the molecular mechanisms underlying thisunique nature of the infection in resting CD4+ Tcells, starting from the first in vivo analysis ofintegration sites in resting CD4+ T cells to thenovel discovery of the bidirectional regulation onintegrated HIV-1 by the host gene transcriptionalread-through.

O autorze

Dr.Han received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine in 2008. Her dissertation research projects on
HIV-1 latency were under the guidance of her thesis advisor,
Dr.Robert Siliciano. She graduated with the Young Investigator
Award and was elected into phi kappa beta. Dr.Han has authored 11
peer reviewed journal articles.