July 28, 2017
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
A protective extracellular matrix responsible for HIV infectivity
A recent ANRS-funded study, led by Maria-Isabel Thoulouze in the Department of Virology (Institut Pasteur/CNRS, UMR 3569 Paris) and her colleagues from Inserm and Kremlin Bicêtre University Hospital, has revealed that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prompts infected lymphocytes to produce an extracellular matrix that carries viral particles, protecting them from the immune system and from antiretroviral drugs. These findings, which pinpoint a new therapeutic target, were presented on July 26, 2017 at the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2017), run by the International AIDS Society and the ANRS and held in Paris from July 23 to 26, 2017.