Guido Silvestri – författare

A successful vaccine for the prevention and/or immunotherapy against HIV/AIDS is one of the prominent challenges of the 21st century. To date, all human vaccine trials against this virus/disease have resulted in failure, or at best have shown very low efficacy. The scientific community dealing with HIV/AIDS has unanimously proposed a focus on basic science, with the intention of identifying correlates of protection that can serve as guides in developing and evaluating vaccine preparation. However, Nature seems to have already found several ways of dealing with infections by HIV and related primate lentiviruses, either by resisting infection or, once infected, avoiding immune damage and immunodeficiency.

Models of Protection Against HIV/SIV will allow for an in-depth reflection on the perspectives for vaccine and therapy research derived from important recent studies. It will be authored by some of the most well known specialists in the field of HIV resistance/protection: including F. Barr�-Sinoussi (2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine winner), B. Walker, S. Rowland-Jones, A. Telenti, M. Lederman and F. Plummer.

This book is structured in a unique way, looking at three models of resistance/protection separately and then comparing the models against one another to provide its readership with a detailed examination of the research that is most predominant in the search for a vaccine. This structure presents the information in an easy-to-understand format and gives the book a cross-discipline appeal -- an important reference for those in the scientific community, medical care, public health and academia alike.

Natural Hosts of SIV: Implications in AIDS thoroughly reviews the possible mechanisms by which African nonhuman primate natural hosts of lentiviruses remain essentially disease-free while other hosts exhibit disease and death. The book ultimately indicates directions for further research and potential translations of this compelling phenomenon into novel approaches to treat and prevent HIV. When Asian non-human primate non-natural hosts are experimentally infected with viruses isolated from African species, disease and death normally results. Meanwhile, these African nonhuman primate natural hosts maintain similar levels of plasma and cellular viremia and exhibit compellingly different, essentially disease-free, states. This work attempts to answer the question of how the natural host remains disease resistant.

This volume summarizes recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of HIV-1 latency, in characterizing residual viral reservoirs, and in developing targeted interventions to reduce HIV-1 persistence during antiretroviral therapy. Specific chapters address the molecular mechanisms that govern and regulate HIV-1 transcription and latency; assays and technical approaches to quantify viral reservoirs in humans and animal models; the complex interchange between viral reservoirs and the host immune system; computational strategies to model viral reservoir dynamics; and the development of therapeutic approaches that target viral reservoir cells. With contributions from an interdisciplinary group of investigators that cover a broad spectrum of subjects, from molecular virology to proof-of-principle clinical trials, this book is a valuable resource for basic scientists, translational investigators, infectious-disease physicians, individuals living with HIV/AIDS and the general public.