An ordeal that does not heal: understanding barriers to a cure for HIV-1 infection

With more than 38 million people living with HIV-1 (PLWH) worldwide, developing a cure for HIV-1 remains a major global health priority. Lifelong persistence of HIV-1 is frequently attributed to a pool of stable, transcriptionally silent HIV-1 proviruses, which are unaffected by currently available antiretroviral therapy (ART) or host immune activity. In this opinion article, we propose a more dynamic interpretation of HIV-1 reservoir cell biology and argue that HIV-1 proviruses frequently display residual viral transcriptional activity, making them vulnerable to longitudinal immune-mediated selection processes. Such mechanisms may, over extended periods of ART, induce an attenuated viral reservoir profile characterized by intact proviruses preferentially integrated into heterochromatin locations. We suggest that intensifying and accelerating naturally occurring selection mechanisms might represent a promising strategy for finding a potential cure for HIV-1 infection.