HIV Cure the Goal of Future Study Into Genetic Tagging: Benjamin K. Chen, MD, PhD

Benjamin K. Chen, MD, PhD, professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, spoke about how his recently published study, which found that researchers could genetically tag immune cells with latent HIV, could affect future research in this area, specifically in regard to a cure for HIV. Chen was the senior author on the study published in Nature Communications.

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

How do you envision gene therapy working with other forms of HIV treatment, such as immunotherapy?

That's a great, great question. We've had such great advances in gene therapy, like the big example being COVID-19 mRNA [messenger RNA] vaccines. We do have the ability to transfer genes into targeted cells, like immune cells. I think what we would like to do, and what we and others are pursuing, is very targeted methods, methods that could activate the virus very specifically only in those dormant cells. Then, in conjunction with maybe immunotherapies, we could reactivate the virus and eliminate that hidden reservoir. And again, this is largely with the interest of potentially curing HIV mRNA vaccines. We do have the ability to transfer genes into targeted cells, like immune cells. I think what we would like to do, and what we and others are pursuing, is very targeted methods, which could activate the virus very specifically only in those dormant cells. Then, in conjunction with maybe immunotherapies, we could reactivate the virus and eliminate that hidden reservoir. This is largely with the interest of potentially curing HIV.

What are you hoping to find in future studies to build on the findings of this study?

What we hope to define is what I think may be a new class of drugs that can reactivate HIV in a very targeted way. These could be mRNA-targeted drugs, or they could be small molecules that change the pattern of the genetic signatures towards cells that are actively infected, as opposed to latently infected. These would potentially add to the armamentarium that we have, the drug classes that we might be able to use to address the goal of an HIV cure.