Philippe Rascle

This session, chaired by Eckart VON HIRSCHHAUSEN, exhibited recent data about HIV reservoir description and HIV cure methods. A discussion completes the presentation point by point and extends the vision of the speaker about this field. To conclude by the award ceremony.

Daniel DOUEK presented a recent updated lecture concerning the HIV reservoir. He summarized our current knowledges on the remission examples, HIV reservoir localization, characteristic of the viral reservoir and finished by describing the limit of ART in clinical application about HIV reservoir eradication. Thus, he presented the methods developed to solve this limit: latency reversing agents (TLR agonist), blocked immune check point (PD-1), therapeutic vaccine (MVA), bNAbs methods (PG121) and CCR5 gene-editing (zinc-finger nuclease). The discussion with Paula CANNON, led to back on the presentation with more details about the importance of the cure and the link with the reservoir localization, HIV reservoir cell type contribution, latency reversing agent role, bNAbs method and application, and CCR5 gene-editing potential as HIV cure. To finish the IAS/Abivax Research-for-Cure Academy Fellowship Prize, presided by Steven DEEKS, has been discerned to Maria PAXIMADIS. She obtained this prize for her contribution to HIV cure research.

The session described and discussed HIV cure diversity methods to eradicate HIV reservoir in PLWH. Daniel DOUEK exhibited the limit of ART by clinical data. He showed that this treatment needed to be completed with a new method that most likely will be a combination of several approaches (LRAs + bNAbs + ICB). However, to lead to develop new protocols and tools to eradicate the HIV reservoir we need to understand its composition and characteristics. He exposed the recent development of diverse technics which present encouraging data.