16,17 ✉ and The International AIDS Society (IAS) Global Scientific Strategy working group*Despite the success of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV, lifelong treatment is required and there is no cure. HIV can integrate in the host genome and persist for the life span of the infected cell. These latently infected cells are not recognized as foreign because they are largely transcriptionally silent, but contain replication-competent virus that drives resurgence of the infection once ART is stopped. With a combination of immune activators, neutralizing antibodies, and therapeutic vaccines, some nonhuman primate models have been cured, providing optimism for these approaches now being evaluated in human clinical trials. In vivo delivery of gene-editing tools to either target the virus, boost immunity or protect cells from infection, also holds promise for future HIV cure strategies. In this Review, we discuss advances related to HIV cure in the last 5 years, highlight remaining knowledge gaps and identify priority areas for research for the next 5 years.

BackgroundOngoing intra-host HIV-1 evolution has been shown in individuals that naturally suppress the viremia to low levels (HIV controllers) by the analysis of the RNA in plasma compartment. Detection of evolution at the DNA proviral compartment in HIV controllers, however, has been more challenging and the precise correlation between the systemic viral suppression level and rate of reservoir’s reseeding in those individuals is not fully understood. In this sense, we examined the proviral DNA quasispecies by single genome amplification of the env gene in a cohort of 23 HIV controllers from Brazil, divided in three groups, according to the level of systemic viral suppression: (1) elite controllers with persistent undetectable viral load (PEC, n = 6); (2) elite controllers with occasional episodes of transient (51–400 copies/mL) viremia (EEC, n = 7); and (3) viremic controllers with persistent low-level (80–2000 copies/mL) viremia (VC, n = 10).ResultsThe HIV-1 diversity of the PBMC-associated proviral quasispecies in EC was significantly (P < 0.01) lower than in VC, but not significantly different between PEC and EEC groups. We detected a considerable variation in the average pairwise nucleotide distance and proportion of unique sequences in the HIV-1 proviral quasispecies of PEC and EEC. Some PEC and EEC displayed highly homogenous proviral populations with large clusters of identical sequences, while others exhibited relatively diverse proviral populations with a high proportion of unique sequences comparable to VC subjects. The long-term (10–15 years) follow-up of the HIV-1 proviral populations revealed a complete evolutionary stasis in one PEC and measurable divergence rates in one EEC [3.1 (1.2–5.6) × 10−3 substitutions/site/year and one VC [2.9 (0.7–5.1) × 10−3 substitutions/site/year].ConclusionsThere is no simple relationship between systemic viral suppression and intra-host proviral diversity or rate of reservoir’s reseeding in chronically infected HIV controllers. Our results demonstrate that very divergent patterns of intra-host viral diversity and divergence could be detected in the setting of natural suppression of HIV-1 replication and that ongoing evolution and reseeding of the PBMC proviral reservoir occurs in some elite controllers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12977-017-0354-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background The mechanisms behind natural control of HIV replication are still unclear, and several studies pointed that elite controllers are a heterogeneous group. Methods We performed analyses of virologic, genetic and immunologic parameters of HIV-1 controllers groups: 1) Elite Controllers (EC; VL <80 copies/mL); 2) Ebbing Elite Controllers (EEC; transient viremia/blips); and Viremic Controllers (VC; detectable viremia <5,000 copies/mL). Untreated non-controllers (NC), patients under suppressive HAART and HIV-1 negative individuals were analyzed as controls. Results Total and integrated HIV-1 DNA for EC were significantly lower than for NC and HAART groups. 2-LTR circles were detected in EEC (3/5) and VC (6/7) but not in EC. While EC and EEC maintain normal T cell counts over time, some VC displayed negative CD4+ T cells slopes. VC and EEC showed a higher percentage of activated CD8+ T cells and microbial translocation than HIV-1 negative controls. EC displayed a weaker Gag/Nef IFN-γ T cell response and a significantly lower proportion of anti-HIV IgG antibodies than EEC, VC and NC groups. Conclusion Transient/persistent low level viremia in HIV controllers may have an impact on immunologic and virologic profiles. Classify HIV controllers patients taking into account their virologic profile may decrease the heterogeneity of HIV controllers cohorts, which may help to clarify the mechanisms associated to the elite control of HIV.

ObjectivesTo investigate the impact of early combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) on inflammation biomarkers and immune activation during acute and early chronic HIV-1 infection.MethodsWe included 12 acute (AHI), 11 early chronic (EcHI), and 18 late chronic HIV-1-infected (LcHI) individuals who were treated with cART and 18 HIV-1-uninfected (HIV-neg) individuals. Plasmatic levels of inflammation biomarkers, CD8+CD38+HLA-DR+ T cell frequencies, CD4 T cell counts, CD4/CD8 ratio, total HIV-1 DNA and plasmatic viral load were evaluated. Mann–Whitney test, Pearson and Spearman correlation, and linear regression models were used for statistical analyses.ResultsIP-10, IL-18, and sCD163 were significantly elevated at pre-ART in the AHI and EcHI groups, showing a significant reduction after 6 months of cART in the AHI group, achieving similar levels to the HIV-neg group. For the EcHI group, the IP-10 and sCD163 levels were also significantly reduced on M6-ART; however, IP-10 levels remained higher than in the HIV-neg group, and no significant reduction of IL-18 levels was observed. The CD8+ T cell activation levels were elevated in the AHI and EcHI groups at pre-ART and showed a significant reduction on M6-ART, but they were similar to levels seen for HIV-neg only after 12 months of cART. At pre-ART, IP-10 levels but not IL-18 levels were positively correlated with HIV-1 viral load in the AHI group.ConclusionsEarly initiation of cART in HIV infection can reduce systemic inflammation, but the earlier normalization of the inflammation markers was only observed when cART was initiated in the acute phase of infection. A slower dynamic of reduction was observed for CD8+ T cell activation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12977-018-0458-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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