An In Vitro System to Model the Establishment and Reactivation of HIV-1 Latency in Primary Human CD4+ T Cells.

HIV-1 establishes latency primarily by infecting activated CD4+ T cells that later return to quiescence as memory cells. Latency allows HIV-1 to evade immune responses and to persist during antiretroviral therapy, which represents an important problem in clinical practice. Here we describe both the original and a simplified version of HIV-1 latency models that mimics this process using replication competent viruses. Our model allows generation of large numbers of latently infected CD4+ T cell to dissect molecular mechanisms of HIV latency and reactivation.