From: Université de Sherbrooke
Photo: Mathieu Lanthier – Université de Sherbrooke
HIV diagnoses increased by 25% in Canada between 2021 and 2022, and by 120% in the city of Montreal alone—a very concerning context despite four decades of relentless research in the fight against this virus. A recent discovery from the Université de Sherbrooke reignites hope for a definitive solution to this pandemic. These encouraging results come after over 30 years of efforts in laboratories worldwide to uncover the « keys » to HIV latency.
The research team led by Brendan Bell, a professor-researcher at the Department of Microbiology and Infectiology at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Université de Sherbrooke, has been working for over 10 years to better understand this virus that attacks the body’s immune system. This team has discovered a molecular « key » that plays an important role in controlling the virus’s active replication or latent state.
The latent state is the primary barrier to curing HIV and poses a major challenge for vaccine development. During latency, the virus integrates into our own DNA and cannot be targeted by currently available antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. Additionally, HIV’s ability to quickly establish latency in the human body allows it to evade our immune system. The team’s recent results were published in the prestigious international journal PLOS Pathogens.
In collaboration with Professor Pierre Lavigne’s team from the Department of Biochemistry and Functional Genomics at UdeS, they have demonstrated that the protein complex specifically recognizes the central promoter region of HIV, much like a key fits a specific lock. International collaborations are underway to translate this protein discovery into clinically useful molecules. If successful, this work could offer new perspectives for combating other distinct viruses, such as herpes, which also evade the immune system by hiding in the body in a latent form.
(Photo: Professor Bell and his doctoral student Morgane Da Rocha now hope to harness the power of artificial intelligence to identify small molecules that could impact HIV latency in the search for a solution to eradicate the HIV pandemic.)