Otte F, Zhang Y, Spagnuolo J, Thielen A, Däumer M, Wiethe C, Stoeckle M, Kusejko K, Klein F, Metzner KJ, Klimkait T. Revealing viral and cellular dynamics of HIV-1 at the single-cell level during early treatment periods.
Cell Rep Methods 2023;
3:100485. [PMID:
37426753 PMCID:
PMC10326345 DOI:
10.1016/j.crmeth.2023.100485]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2022] [Revised: 01/30/2023] [Accepted: 04/28/2023] [Indexed: 07/11/2023]
Abstract
While combination therapy completely suppresses HIV-1 replication in blood, functional virus persists in CD4+ T cell subsets in non-peripheral compartments that are not easily accessible. To fill this gap, we investigated tissue-homing properties of cells that transiently appear in the circulating blood. Through cell separation and in vitro stimulation, the HIV-1 "Gag and Envelope reactivation co-detection assay" (GERDA) enables sensitive detection of Gag+/Env+ protein-expressing cells down to about one cell per million using flow cytometry. By associating GERDA with proviral DNA and polyA-RNA transcripts, we corroborate the presence and functionality of HIV-1 in critical body compartments utilizing t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (tSNE) and density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) clustering with low viral activity in circulating cells early after diagnosis. We demonstrate transcriptional HIV-1 reactivation at any time, potentially giving rise to intact, infectious particles. With single-cell level resolution, GERDA attributes virus production to lymph-node-homing cells with central memory T cells (TCMs) as main players, critical for HIV-1 reservoir eradication.
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