Researchers at Inserm have developed a method to direct pre-existing antibodies toward new targets. Their bimodular fusion proteins could be a broadly useful method for expanding access to antibody therapy. In a study that appeared in the Feb. 11, 2022, issue of Science Advances, the teams showed that antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which are present in 95% of the global population, could be redirected to a target cell of their choosing by fusing an EBV antigen to a cellular targeting ligand.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies are one of the most powerful weapons against HIV. And like everything that is effective in the fight against HIV, they are hard to come by.

Barely more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there are five approved vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 available in the U.S. Forty years into the HIV pandemic, there are none. That contrast was repeatedly made by speakers at the 2022 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI).

In the Feb. 9, 2022, issue of Science Translational Medicine, investigators reported the anatomical location in which the Ebola virus was hiding and persisting in nonhuman primates had otherwise appeared to have been cured by monoclonal therapy prior to the relapse.

At the 2022 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), investigators reported on a fourth patient who has achieved HIV remission after a stem cell transplant. The patient is the first woman and the first mixed-race person to achieve HIV remission through a transplant procedure. In 2017, she was transplanted with cord blood stem cells lacking a functional CCR5 receptor, which prevents HIV from entering cells.

It's neither a retrovirus nor an opportunistic infection. But of course, SARS-CoV-2 has a prominent place at the table at the 2022 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) – starting with the fact that COVID-19 has again forced the conference to go virtual.

The overwhelming focus of research into the cellular immune response to SARS-CoV-2 has been investigating the reaction of vaccinated people, in an effort to establish correlates of protection required to fight off infection. But with a majority in many African and Asian countries still unvaccinated, it also is important to understand the natural cellular immune response, and to track the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with the potential to escape immunity in these populations.

A Japanese study has shown that targeting the chemokine receptor CCR4 using treatment with the monoclonal antibody mogamulizumab (Poteligeo, Kyowa, Amgen) depleted immune regulatory T cells and significantly improved survival in a canine model of advanced prostate cancer.

Studies published this week have introduced a consensus-based definition of long COVID-19 in children and young persons, narrowing its prevalence estimates, which have been wildly divergent. Long COVID rates for adults are still unclear, but a recent meta-analysis estimated that between one third and two thirds of adult COVID-19 patients who had severe acute disease develop symptoms of long COVID.