Some recent results on HIV pathogenesis with implications for therapy and vaccines

In the third decade of AIDS research, we are still facing most of the challenges that emerged when the disease was characterized. While therapeutic approaches to control HIV infection are available in developed countries, novel principles to combat and prevent HIV infection are needed, due to the high cost and the negative effects of currently available drugs. In addition, it is now clear that this disease cannot be eliminated without a vaccine, which appears to be the only possible weapon to combat HIV in developing countries. We have focused on two approaches to fight HIV; one based on select members of a family of proteins, i.e. beta-chemokines, that we have show to interfere with HIV entry and replication, and another centered on a viral protein, HIV-1 Tat, that is crucially involved in HIV regulation and in some of the pathogenic manifestations of HIV infection. Studies from others and ourselves have shown that these two approaches are now ready to the leave experimental bench and move into clinical testing.