Defective viral genomes: advances in understanding their generation, function, and impact on infection outcomes.

Defective viral genomes (DVGs) are truncated derivatives of their parental viral genomes generated during an aberrant round of viral genomic replication. Distinct classes of DVGs have been identified in most families of both positive- and negative-sense RNA viruses. Importantly, DVGs have been detected in clinical samples from virally infected individuals and an emerging body of association studies implicates DVGs in shaping the severity of disease caused by viral infections in humans.

Curaxin CBL0100 Blocks HIV-1 Replication and Reactivation through Inhibition of Viral Transcriptional Elongation.

Despite combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), predominantly caused by the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), remains incurable. The barrier to a cure lies in the virus' ability to establish a latent infection in HIV/AIDS patients. Unsurprisingly, efforts for a sterilizing cure have focused on the "shock and kill" strategy using latency-reversing agents (LRAs) to complement cART in order to eliminate these latent reservoirs.