HIV

Perspectives

  • 14 May 2013 - SUPER-RESOLUTION IMAGING

    Let there be light – microscopy beyond the diffraction barrier

    HIV, Shigella, immune evasion

    New approaches allow to recover even details of virus particles, which, by contrast, conventional microscopy cannot visualize. © Pasteur Institut

    Superresolution optical microscopy is revolutionizing biology. The pioneers of this nanoscopy used clever tricks to enhance the established methods of fluorescence microscopy and push beyond the once insurmountable resolution limits of optical microscopy. For the first time, researchers could even watch molecules perform their biochemical tasks, image virus particles in detail and visualize infection processes. [ more ]

Interviews

  • 13 October 2009 - EPIDEMIOLOGY

    “Prevention is just as important as individual therapy”

    epidemiology, HIV, AIDS

    Andrea Ammon heads the “Surveillance” department at the European Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention. Her task is to implement a standardized method of data acquisition for reportable infectious diseases throughout the European Union. In this interview she explains why the fledgling science of epidemiology is of growing importance, and how difficult it is to build up a sound database of epidemiological data in order to prevent future outbreaks. [ more ]

News

  • 3 April 2013 - DUKE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER/NATURE

    Study: Potential map to more effective HIV vaccine

    AIDS, HIV, HIV vaccine

    By tracking the very earliest days of one person's robust immune response to HIV, researchers have charted a new route for developing a long-sought vaccine that could boost the body's ability to neutralize the virus. The research team, led by Barton F. Haynes, M.D., director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and... [ more ]

  • 29 March 2013 - CELL PRESS/ CELL

    HIV antibodies that are worth the wait

    AIDS, HIV, HIV vaccine, vaccine development

    An effective vaccine against HIV-1 remains elusive, but one promising strategy focuses on designer antibodies that have much broader potency than most normal, exquisitely specific antibodies. These broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) can handle the high mutation rate of HIV particles that makes normal, very... [ more ]

  • 4 March 2013 - UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS/CROI 2013

    First 'functional HIV cure' in an infant

    HIV, antiretroviral therapy

    A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins Children's Center, the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the University of Massachusetts Medical School describe the first case of a so-called "functional cure" in an HIV-infected infant. The finding, the investigators say, may help pave the way to eliminating HIV... [ more ]

  • 22 January 2013 - JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE/PNAS

    Cells' DNA repair machinery can destroy viruses

    HIV

    A team of researchers based at Johns Hopkins has decoded a system that makes certain types of immune cells impervious to HIV infection. The system's two vital components are high levels of a molecule that becomes embedded in viral DNA like a code written in invisible ink, and an enzyme that, when it reads the code,... [ more ]

DZIF (German Centre for Infection Research) Logo

German Centre for Infection Research

United against Infections

It is the 21st century and infections are still a major challenge for medicine. What is our recourse as germs become increasingly resistant to antibiotics? What can we do to prevent the spread of a pathogen? The researchers at the German Centre for Infection Research (Deutsches Zentrum für Infektionsforschung, DZIF) are tackling these and many other issues.