PhD defence H.A.B. (Henrieke) Prins

Summary:

The introduction of antiretroviral treatment (ART) has dramatically improved the life expectancy of people living with HIV (PLWH). However, since the start of the epidemic in the early 1980s, 33 million people have lost their life due to aids-related illness. This high mortality underlines the importance of awareness of HIV, its diagnosis and treatment, and also its cure. The main barrier to finding a cure for HIV is the so-called HIV reservoir: long-lived human immune cells with HIV integrated in their DNA form this latent reservoir. Therefore, strategies to cure HIV focus on reducing the HIV reservoir. For example, this can be done by starting ART as early as possible during an acute HIV infection, or through reactivation of the latent HIV reservoir which allows detection and subsequent elimination by the immune system. In her thesis, Henrieke Prins introduces novel clinical treatment strategies aimed at curing HIV. She describes promising patient cohorts and clinical studies that help us realize this goal. These studies are a joint effort by the multidisciplinary research group called ‘Erasmus MC HIV Eradication Group’ (EHEG) that focuses on HIV cure-focused translational research. The studies described in her thesis form the basis for encouraging future clinical strategies to bring us one step closer to viral suppression in the absence of ART, in other words, clinical HIV cure.