A gene therapy approach to eliminate HIV-1-infected cells.

ABSTRACT

The ideal therapy for HIV infection requires a method to eliminate all HIV-harboring cells in the infected individual. The authors are developing an HIV-specific promoter to drive the expression of suicide genes that would induce cell death specifically in HIV-infected cells. The authors constructed a promoter that is 100-fold more responsive to the HIV transcriptional activator, Tat, than cellular transcription factors, using a plasmid expressing luciferase under the control of the mutated LTR promoter.