4.0.1 Jeffrey Lifson — Session 4, Introduction 1

Jeffrey Lisfson: I'm Jeff Lifson from the Frederick National Laboratory. I'd like to welcome all of you to this evening's session on Human and Primate Retroviruses and the Origin of HIV. If I could have the first slide. I wanted to make a couple of introductory comments before we get to our first formal speaker. 

I think that nonhuman primate studies have been really invaluable in helping us understand key aspects of AIDS virus biology, both in the study of animals that are naturally infected with these viruses and also in various experimental models where viruses [00:00:30] from naturally infected animals have been used for experimental infections in Old World Asian Macaques. They've provided great insights into the biology of transmission, insights into various important aspects of pathogenesis including loss of mucosal CD4 cells early on. 

I think studies of so-called natural hosts, that is African primates each infected with their own adapted lentivirus, have provided great insights into [00:01:00] underlying aspects of pathogenesis and potential clues as well as providing hints into viral restriction factor research. 

At a practical and applied level, as non-human experimental infection models have been developed, they've been very key in helping to evaluate experimental antiretrovirals [and] biologicals. Now, as we're starting to develop more rigorous models to look at reservoir in the setting of combination retroviral therapy [00:01:30] and evaluating proof of concept studies for various different cure-type studies, they've been very valuable. And critical for evaluation of prevention approaches, vaccine and non-vaccine approaches including microbicides and other prevention modalities. 

They've also been critical and one of the main focal points of this evening's presentation is going to be in terms of understanding where did HIV come from and tracing the spread of HIV-1, HIV-2, and [00:02:00] the lineage of how things have gone. We're very fortunate to have some terrific speakers in this evening's session to address each of these points. 

My co-chair, Ruth Ruprecht, wanted to make a couple of comments and then we'll get onto our first presentation from our initial speaker Ron Desrosiers. Ruth? 

[00:02:20] [END OF AUDIO]

Index

• 4.0.2 Ruth Ruprecht — Session 4, Introduction 2
• 4.1 Ronald Desrosiers — The Origin of SIVmac: Non-human Primate Models for HIV
• cure vs. remission of HIV/AIDS
• Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR, NCI-Frederick)
• HIV vaccine
• models (model systems, model organisms, modeling)
• non-human primates
• prevention of HIV/AIDS
• restriction factor
• retrovirus classification, subfamilies, and genera
• viral reservoir, viral latency, disease reservoir