Zeitschrift für Infektionskrankheiten und Therapie

Abstrakt

Immunotherapy in HIV Infection

Bhawna Poonia

Substantial progress has been made in devising successful therapies against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) replication, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) can provide a sustained control of HIV replication. It is, however, associated with at best partial immune reconstitution, as well as lack of elimination of viral reservoirs. Both innate and adaptive immune cell compartments that suffer as a result of HIV replication, fail to recover completely under ART, hence, the need for lifelong therapy once infected. Novel therapeutic approaches are being tested at an encouraging rate and have the potential to improve the odds against the virus. Among them, immunotherapeutic approaches are one of the exciting areas and can be considered as adjunct to ART for improving immune competence. Cells of the innate immune system, including natural killer (NK) cells, gamma delta (γδ) T cells and natural killer T (NKT) cells have cytotoxic potential against viruses, and therapies including such effector cells will be useful. The fact that HIV infection results in a severe dysfunction in most of these effector subsets, warrants approaches that take this into consideration. One reason for the dysfunction of immune cells is the disruption of the common γ chain family of cytokines during HIV infection. These cytokines play vital role in regulating functional activities of such immune effector cells. Consequently, besides and along with cells, these cytokines including IL-2, IL-7, IL-15 and IL-21 have shown some promise against HIV infection. This review briefly summarizes the immune therapy options in HIV infection, with special focus on innate cells and cytokines.