INHIBITION OF HIV-1 REPLICATION BY A TAT TRANSDOMINANT NEGATIVE MUTANT IN HUMAN PERIPHERAL-BLOOD LYMPHOCYTES FROM HEALTHY DONORS AND HIV-1-INFECTED PATIENTS

It was previously shown that a tat mutant (tat(22)) where cysteine-2 i s substituted by glycine behaves as a transdominant negative mutant in Jurkat T cells lytically or latently infected by HIV-1. In this study we demonstrate that tat(22) controls HIV-1 replication in primary cel ls. This effect was observed both after in vitro infection of peripher al blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from normal donors and after reacti vation of the latent infection in PBMCs from seropositive patients. Th e antiviral effect of tat(22) was limited to conditions of low virus p roduction. The use of tat(22) may be promising for a gene therapy appr oach to AIDS during the asymptomatic phase of the disease allowing con trol of virus replication in infected cells and inhibition of virus sp read to uninfected cells.