Scientists have determined which immune cells HIV “prefers”

Scientists have discovered new aspects of the HIV infection process and determined what factors the virus uses to choose which immune cells to infect. It turns out it's all about sugar. The results of the relevant study are published in eLife.

We know that HIV prefers a special kind of immune cell, CD-4 T-cells. There are, however, several variants of the cell and it has been difficult for experts to determine exactly which one is “more attractive” to the virus - and why.

Aiming to solve this puzzle, a team from the Gladstone Institute combined the CyTOF-Lec method (used to study the protein profile of individual immune cells) with a special PP-SLIDE tool for cell profile reconstruction. Their results highlighted two important discoveries:

First, HIV prefers to infect CD4 memory T-cells with the largest amount of two types of sugars on their surface: fucose and sialic acid. Further experiments have confirmed that sialic acid is necessary for HIV to effectively infect CD4 T-cells.

Second, HIV forces the infected cell to produce more of these sugars.

According to the researchers, it is these abilities of HIV that allow infected cells to survive, since sialic acid is associated with evasion of immune surveillance. Hiding from the immune system, infected cells are more able to quickly gain a foothold and spread throughout the body.

With the use of sugar-based biomarkers these cells are now more able to become a therapeutic target. In the future, scientists plan to test the CyTOF-Lec method on samples of infected cells exposed to antiretroviral therapy.