Challenges and ethical considerations of HIV cure and treatment interruption trials will be thoroughly discussed during this year’s workshops. Moreover, workshops will provide the participants with a thorough understanding of HIV quantification tools including PCR-based and cell-based functional assays, which are of great importance in therapy monitoring for the development of HIV cure strategies. An introductory course to ex vivo viral outgrowth assays and its use to quantify the replication competent HIV reservoir will be covered. The participants will receive an intensive training on PCR, qPCR, digital and digital droplet PCR methods and single genome sequencing with a comprehensive overview of clinical use of these methods and clinical significance of various HIV markers. Novel aspects of HIV persistence such as clonal expansion and integration site analysis will also be discussed and thorough overview of assays to monitor them will be presented. Given that the host’s immune system is an indispensable component of an effective cure strategy, in addition to virological assays, the workshop will present an overview of immunological assays that are commonly used to assess the competency of the immune system. The workshop will conclude with comprehensive hands-on sessions that will include statistical data analysis training sessions.

Target audience

Researchers interested in: low level RNA or DNA quantification by digital PCR and immune monitoring assays especially in the field of HIV research.