title: Reactivation capacity by latency-reversing agents ex vivo correlates with the size of the HIV-1 reservoir.
abstract: HIV-1 reservoirs are the major hurdle to virus clearance in combination antiretroviral therapy (cART)-treated patients. An approach to eradicating HIV-1 involves reversing latency in cART-treated patients to make latent cells visible to the host immune system. Stimulation of patient cell cultures with latency-reversing agents (LRAs) ex vivo results in heterogeneous responses among HIV-infected patients. Determinants of this heterogeneity are unknown and consequently important to determine.
  
  
  
  Here, we grouped and retrospectively analyzed the data from our two recent HIV-1 reactivation studies to investigate the role of the HIV-1 reservoir size in the reactivation capacity by LRAs in ex vivo cultures of CD8-depleted peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) isolated from 54 cART-treated patients and of resting CD4 T cells isolated from 30 cART-treated patients.
  
  
  
  Our results established a statistically relevant positive correlation between the HIV-1 reservoir size measured by total cell-associated HIV-1 DNA and the frequency of positive HIV-1 recovery measurements in response to various LRAs in ex vivo cultures of cells isolated from cART-treated HIV aviremic patients. HIV-1 reservoir size also correlated with the extracellular HIV-1 RNA median level measured in supernatants of cell cultures following LRA treatments. However, we identified HIV patients whose positive measurements frequency and median level of extracellular HIV-1 RNA deviated from linearity relative to their corresponding HIV reservoir size.
  
  
  
  We demonstrated that the reservoir size is one predictive marker of LRA effectiveness but this parameter alone is not sufficient. The identification of other predictive markers is necessary to predict the success of HIV anti-latency approaches.
authors.affiliation: aService of Molecular Virology, Département de Biologie Moléculaire (DBM), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Gosselies bService des Maladies Infectieuses, Université de Liège, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) de Liège, Domaine Universitaire du Sart-Tilman, Liège, Belgium cService de Virologie, Université Paris-Descartes, AP-HP, Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades, Paris, France dService des Maladies Infectieuses, CHU St-Pierre, ULB, Bruxelles, Belgium eInstitut de Parasitologie et de Pathologie Tropicale, EA7292 fInstitut Universitaire de Technologie Louis Pasteur de Schiltigheim, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Gilles
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Darcis
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bouchat
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kula
authors.forename: Benoit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Van Driessche
authors.forename: Nadège
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Delacourt
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vanhulle
authors.forename: Véronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Avettand-Fenoel
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: De Wit
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rohr
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rouzioux
authors.forename: Carine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Van Lint
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000821:virology*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000254:growth & development*; D006801:Humans; D007963:Leukocytes, Mononuclear / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000821:virology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014775:Virus Activation; D017735:Virus Latency / Q000187:drug effects*