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Science 6 March 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5919, pp. 1304 - 1307
DOI: 10.1126/science.1165706
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Review

The Challenge of Finding a Cure for HIV Infection

Douglas D. Richman,1* David M. Margolis,2 Martin Delaney,3{dagger} Warner C. Greene,4 Daria Hazuda,5 Roger J. Pomerantz6

Although combination therapy for HIV infection represents a triumph for modern medicine, chronic suppressive therapy is required to contain persistent infection in reservoirs such as latently infected CD4+ lymphocytes and cells of the macrophage-monocyte lineage. Despite its success, chronic suppressive therapy is limited by its cost, the requirement of lifelong adherence, and the unknown effects of long-term treatment. This review discusses our current understanding of suppressive antiretroviral therapy, the latent viral reservoir, and the needs for and challenges of attacking this reservoir to achieve a cure.

1 San Diego VA Healthcare System and University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093–0679, USA.
2 Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
3 Project Inform, 1375 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA.
4 Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, San Francisco, CA 94158, and University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
5 Merck and Co., West Point, PA 19486, USA.
6 Tibotec Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Johnson and Johnson Corporation, 1020 Stony Hill Road, Suite 300, Yardley, PA 19067, USA.

{dagger} Deceased 23 January 2009.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: drichman{at}ucsd.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Investing To Meet The Scientific Challenges Of HIV/AIDS.
A. S. Fauci and G. K. Folkers (2009)
Health Aff. 28, 1629-1641
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)