27 February 2026
Introduction: End-of-life (EOL) HIV cure-related research offers a unique opportunity to advance scientific discovery while honoring the values, dignity, and legacy of people with HIV. However, participation remains demographically skewed, mirroring...
Background: The Canadian HIV Cure Enterprise (CanCURE) is a pan-Canadian research collaboratory, investigating approaches for achieving sustainable HIV remission. In preparation for the next research cycle, CanCURE researchers and the Community Advis...
The use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) treatment has been highly successful in controlling plasma viremia to undetectable levels. However, a complete cure for HIV is hindered by the presence of replication-comp...
The treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) has evolved since the establishment of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the 1990s, providing HIV-infected individuals with approaches that suppress viral replication, prevent acquired i...
Although combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been a landmark achievement for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), an HIV cure has remained elusive. Elimination of latent HIV reservoirs that persist throughout HIV infection is...
Today HIV infection cannot be cured due to the presence of a reservoir of latently infected cells inducing a viral rebound upon treatment interruption. Hence, the latent reservoir is considered as the major barrier for an HIV cure. So far, efforts to...
The latent reservoir remains a major roadblock to curing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Currently available antiretroviral therapy (ART) can suppress active HIV replication, reduce viral loads to undetectable levels, and halt disease p...
HIV-1 drug therapies can prevent disease progression but cannot eliminate HIV-1 viruses from an infected individual. While there is hope that elimination of HIV-1 can be achieved, several approaches to reach a functional cure (control of HIV-1 replic...
The cure for chronic human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections has been a goal pursued since the antiretroviral therapy that improved the clinical conditions of patients became available. However, the exclusive use of these drugs is not enough to...
The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) establishes a chronic infection that can be well controlled, but not cured, by combined antiretroviral therapy (cART). Interventions have been explored to accomplish a functional cure, meaning that a pati...
HIV-1 infection cannot be cured due to the presence of HIV-1 latently infected cells. These cells do not produce the virus, but they can resume virus production at any time in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. Therefore, people living with HIV (...
Significant advances in the field of HIV-1 therapeutics to achieve antiretroviral treatment (ART)-free remission and cure for persons living with HIV-1 are being made with the advent of broadly neutralizing antibodies and very early ART in perinatal...
Advances in antiretroviral therapy have prolonged the life of people living with HIV and diminished the level of virus in these individuals. Yet, HIV quickly rebounds after disruption and/or cessation of treatment due to significant cellular and anat...
Non-human primate (NHP) models are important for vaccine development and also contribute to HIV cure research. Although none of the animal models are perfect, NHPs enable the exploration of important questions about tissue viral reservoirs and the de...
The persistence of the latent viral reservoir is the main hurdle to curing HIV-1 infection. SIV infection of non-human primates (NHPs), namely Indian-origin rhesus macaques, is the most relevant and widely used animal model to evaluate therapies that...
HIV-1/AIDS remains a global public health problem. The world health organization (WHO) reported at the end of 2019 that 38 million people were living with HIV-1 worldwide, of which only 67% were accessing antiretroviral therapy (ART). Despite great s...
There is currently no cure for HIV infection although adherence to effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) suppresses replication of the virus in blood, increases CD4+ T-cell counts, reverses immunodeficiency, and increases life expectancy. Despite th...
Increasing numbers of HIV-infected individuals have access to potent antiretroviral drugs that control viral replication and decrease the risk of transmission. However, there is no cure for HIV and new strategies have to be developed to reach an erad...
There is broad scientific and societal consensus that finding a cure for HIV infection must be pursued. The major barrier to achieving a cure for HIV/AIDS is the capacity of the HIV virus to avoid both immune surveillance and current antiretroviral t...
Current antiretroviral therapy (ART) increases the survival of HIV-infected individuals, yet it is not curative. The major barrier to finding a definitive cure for HIV is our inability to identify and eliminate long-lived cells containing the dormant...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has brought the HIV/AIDS epidemic under control, but a curative strategy for viral eradication is still needed. The cessation of ART results in rapid viral rebound from latently infected CD4+ T cells, showing that control...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) effectively reduces cycles of viral replication but does not target proviral populations in cells that persist for prolonged periods and that can undergo clonal expansion. Consequently, chronic human immunodeficiency viru...
Gene-modification therapies are at the forefront of HIV-1 cure strategies. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells pose a potential approach to target infected cells during antiretroviral therapy or following analytical treatment interruption (ATI)....
The SupT1 cell line supports optimal HIV-1 replication, and prolonged in vitro replication in SupT1 cells renders the virus significantly less virulent. This raises the question of whether the infusion of SupT1 cells could be used as a cell-based the...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) controls human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) replication and prevents disease progression but does not eradicate HIV-1. The persistence of a reservoir of latently infected cells represents the main barrier to a cure. “...
HIV cure-related clinical trials (HCRCT) with analytical antiretroviral treatment interruptions (ATIs) have become unavoidable. However, the limited benefits for participants and the risk of HIV transmission during ATI might negatively impact physici...
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is a retrovirus that integrates into the host cell’s DNA as a provirus. Transcription from the provirus is regulated in large part by cellular proteins and epigenetic factors. These may be repressive...
Despite significant improvements in therapy, the HIV/AIDS pandemic remains an important threat to public health. Current treatments fail to eradicate HIV as proviral DNA persists in long-living cellular reservoirs, leading to viral rebound whenever t...
Background/Objectives: End-of-life (EOL) HIV cure research, which studies HIV persistence through pre- and post-mortem tissue collection, has focused primarily on people living with HIV (PLWH) with a prognosis of six months or less. However, the pers...
HIV-1 Tat acts as a central molecular switch governing the transition between viral latency and active replication, making it a pivotal target for HIV-1 functional cure strategies. By binding to the viral long terminal repeat (LTR) and hijacking host...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) effectively suppresses HIV replication but fails to eradicate latent reservoirs, leading to viral rebound after interruption. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy offers a potential strategy to achieve durable r...
Frequent viral load testing is necessary during analytical treatment interruptions (ATIs) in HIV cure-directed clinical trials, though such may be burdensome and inconvenient to trial participants. We implemented a national, cross-sectional survey in...
The block-and-lock strategy aims to achieve a functional cure for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection by enforcing durable, drug-independent silencing of proviral transcription. Several latency-promoting agents have been described t...
Combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) has significantly improved the prognosis of individuals living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome has transformed from a fatal disease to a treatable chronic infection...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) can effectively suppress the replication of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but it cannot completely eradicate the virus. The persistent existence of the HIV reservoir is a major obstacle in the quest for a cure. To d...
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections and HIV-induced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) continue to represent a global health burden. There is currently no effective vaccine, nor any cure, for HIV infections; existing antiretroviral t...
The HIV-1 latent reservoir is considered the major barrier to achieve the eradication, although some evidences indicate that curing HIV-1 is a feasible goal [...]
Combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) suppresses viral replication to undetectable levels, reduces mortality and morbidity, and improves the quality of life of people living with HIV (PWH). However, ART cannot cure HIV infection because it is unab...
In spite of the advances in antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV infection, the presence of a latent reservoir of HIV-infected cells represents the largest barrier towards finding a cure. Among the different strategies being pursued to eliminate or re...
Background: Anti-HIV neutralizing antibodies (anti-HIV-nAbs) play a critical role in the immune defense against HIV by preventing viral entry and limiting replication. This study longitudinally evaluated the titers and variability of anti-HIV-nAbs in...
HIV-1 establishes a life-long infection when proviral DNA integrates into the host genome. The provirus can then either actively transcribe RNA or enter a latent state, without viral production. The switch between these two states is governed in grea...
Since its discovery 35 years ago, there have been no therapeutic interventions shown to enable full HIV-1 remission. Combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) has achieved the sustained control of HIV-1 replication, however, the life-long treatment does...
Over 36 million people worldwide are infected with HIV. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has proven to be highly effective to prevent HIV-1 transmission, clinical progression and death. Despite this success, the number of HIV-1 infected individuals conti...
Although current antiretroviral drug therapy can suppress the replication of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a lifelong prescription is necessary to avoid viral rebound. The problem of persistent and ineradicable viral reservoirs in HIV-infected...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology is having a huge impact in the blood malignancy field and is becoming a well-established therapy for many types of leukaemia. In recent decades, efforts have been made to demonstrate that CAR-T cells have po...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has dramatically improved the prognosis for people living with HIV-1, but a cure remains elusive. The largest barrier to a cure is the presence of a long-lived latent reservoir that persists within a heterogenous mix of c...
In individuals infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), the loss of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) is the ultimate therapeutic goal, which defines “functional cure.” For individuals living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), functional cure o...
Despite remarkable progress, a cure for HIV-1 infection remains elusive. Rebound competent latent and transcriptionally active reservoir cells persevere despite antiretroviral therapy and rekindle infection due to inefficient proviral silencing. We p...
Despite the unquestionable success of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the treatment of HIV infection, the cost, need for daily adherence, and HIV-associated morbidities that persist despite ART all underscore the need to develop a cure for HIV. The c...
Recent advances in virology, particularly in the study of HIV-1, have significantly progressed the pursuit of a definitive cure for the disease. Emerging therapeutic strategies encompass innovative gene-editing technologies, immune-modulatory interve...
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