Combination Latency Reversal With High Dose Disulfiram Plus Vorinostat in HIV-infected Individuals on ART

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) dramatically reduces Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) replication leading to restoration of immune function and a near normal life expectancy, but treatment is lifelong and there is no cure. The major barrier to a cure is the persistence of long lived cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4+) T-cells that contain a "silenced" form of HIV, called HIV latency. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether it may be possible to reduce the amount of dormant HIV infection in immune cells, by "turning on" or activating the virus and hence force it out of the latently infected memory T cells. This leads to production of HIV by the cell, which will either die or will be recognized and eliminated by the immune system. As very few T cells are latently infected with HIV, the death of these cells is not expected to affect the function of the immune system and further infection of new cells is expected to be prevented by ART.