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Background:

The main barrier to an HIV cure is the latent HIV reservoir. Long-lived HIV latently-infected cells remain invisible to the host immune system and persist during antiretroviral therapy. In this study, we characterized latently-infected cells by implementing combined transcriptomic and proteomic profiling to identify unique expression signatures and reliable biomarkers that can be exploited to target and eliminate the latent reservoir.

Methods:

Primary CD4+ T cells were purified from six healthy donors and were infected with a dual-reporter HIV construct that enables the isolation of HIV latently-infected and productively-infected cells by flow cytometry. The populations were then characterized using NanoString hybridization and fluorescence-based digital counting technology allowing for simultaneous detection of 770 mRNA and 30 protein targets, and mass cytometry (CyTOF), measuring 40 surface proteins …