The AIDS lab, under the direction of Dr. S. Li, will perform all confirmatory antiviral analyses for the scientific Projects 1 and 2 involving anti-HIV inhibitory activity of new antiviral RNAi designs. In addition, the Core will provide the initial assessment of in vitro antiviral effects of the SHIV vector to be tested in the macaque model in Project 3. The Core will provide HIV isolation and analysis for the clinical trial that will monitor HIV isolation and assessment of HIV sequences during the phase 1 trial. Finally, this Core will be responsible for the release testing for all lots of new lentivirus vectors prepared in Project 2 prior to use in the other laboratory projects and of the RCL testing in the clinical trial.
The specific aims are:
Specific Aim 1 : To assist Projects 1-3 in evaluation of new anti-HIV constructs for potential anti-HIV effect in vitro by performing transient co-transfection assays and post transduction HIV or SHIV infectivity challenges. Thelaboratory will perform RT, p24 or p27, and post challenge PBMC survival assays as confirmation of the new vector development experimentation.
Specific Aim 2 : To assist the clinical trial in Project 4 by performing all HIV-1 isolation required by the study and tocoordinate the processing of all clinical specimens. HIV-1 isolates will be evaluated for resistance to RNAi by monitoring sequence variation within the RNAi targeted region of rev.
Specific Aim 3 : To perform the release tests for replication competent lentivirus on laboratory grade vectors produced in Projects 1 and 2, and to evaluate HIV-1 isolates from pHIV7-shlI vector-treated research subjects for the presence of recombination with the pHIV7-shII sequences.
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