The role of CD32 during HIV-1 infection.

Bertagnolli, Lynn N; White, Jennifer A; Simonetti, Francesco R; Beg, Subul A; Lai, Jun; Tomescu, Costin; Murray, Alexandra J; Antar, Annukka A R et al. · Nature · 2018

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Persistence of latent HIV-1 in long-lived resting memory CD4+ T cells is a major barrier to curing HIV-1 infection, and thus a biomarker for latently infected cells would be of great scientific and clinical importance.<sup>,,,,</sup> Through an elegant discovery-based approach, Descours <i>et al</i>. reported that CD32a, an Fcγ receptor not normally expressed on T cells, is a potential biomarker for latently infected cells. Using the quantitative viral outgrowth assay, we show that CD32+ CD4+ T cells do not harbor the majority of intact proviruses in the latent reservoir and that the enrichment found by Descours <i>et al</i>. may in part reflect the use of an ultrasensitive ELISA for HIV-1 p24 antigen that does not predict exponential viral outgrowth. Our studies show that CD32 is not a biomarker for the major population of latently infected CD4+ T cells.