Hiv

What HIV research is in vogue at the moment? Triple-drug ‘combination’ therapy (see below) and HIV coreceptors. It was known 10 years ago that HIV needs CD4, a cell-surface receptor, to gain entry into cells, but it was also clear that CD4 is not enough: the virus needs a second cell-surface molecule before it can infect and kill a cell. Two years ago the chemokine receptors CCR5 and CXCR4 were identified as the coreceptors used by HIV isolates that infect macrophages and T-cell lines, respectively. Now eight more related molecules have been added to the list.