Proceedings of the 2017 ISEV symposium on “HIV, NeuroHIV, drug abuse, & EVs”

Abstract

Despite the success of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), there is increased prevalence of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) in HIV-1-infected individuals on cART, which poses a major health care challenge. Adding further complexity to this long-term antiretroviral use is the comorbidity with drugs of abuse such as morphine, cocaine, and methamphetamine, which can in turn, exacerbate neurologic and cognitive deficits associated with HAND. Furthermore, HIV proteins, such as the transactivator of transcription (Tat) and the envelope protein (gp120), as well as antiretrovirals themselves can also contribute to the progression of neurodegeneration underlying HAND. In the field of NeuroHIV and drug addiction, EVs hold the potential to serve as biomarkers of cognitive dysfunction, targets of therapy, and as vehicles for therapeutic delivery of agents that can ameliorate disease pathogenesis. Based on the success of a previous Satellite Symposium in 2015 at the ISEV meeting in Washington, experts again expanded on their latest research findings in the field, shedding light on the emerging trends in the field of Extracellular Vesicle (EV) biology in NeuroHIV and drug abuse. The satellite symposium sought to align experts in the fields of NeuroHIV and drug abuse to share their latest insights on the role of EVs in regulating neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, peripheral immune response, and HIV latency in HIV-infected individuals with or without the comorbidity of drug abuse.

Extracellular Vesicles in Smoking-Mediated HIV Pathogenesis and their Potential Role in Biomarker Discovery and Therapeutic Interventions

“…These findings suggest that EVs could potentially be used to indicate the stages of infection, as well as markers of response towards treatment. As mentioned earlier, neuron-derived EVs, isolated from the plasma, could serve as an excellent source of liquid biopsy biomarkers for identifying neurocognitive disorders in HIV [121,164]. Additionally, urinary EVs collected from HIV positive individuals may provide a good source of HIV biomarkers, including p24 [165].…”

Extracellular Vesicles in Smoking-Mediated HIV Pathogenesis and their Potential Role in Biomarker Discovery and Therapeutic Interventions

“…These findings suggest that EVs could potentially be used to indicate the stages of infection, as well as markers of response towards treatment. As mentioned earlier, neuron-derived EVs, isolated from the plasma, could serve as an excellent source of liquid biopsy biomarkers for identifying neurocognitive disorders in HIV [119,174]. Additionally, urinary EVs collected from HIV positive individuals may provide a good source of HIV biomarkers, including p24 [175].…”

A brief history of nearly EV‐erything – The rise and rise of extracellular vesicles

“…With the eruption of a global pandemic in 2020, the ISEV meeting went virtual, holding its first international online conference to great success. The society also organises and supports a variety of other focused workshops and surveys that lead to ‘position papers’ (Hill et al., 2013 ; Lener et al., 2015 ; Mateescu et al., 2017 ; Russell et al., 2019 ; Witwer et al., 2013 ), survey outputs (Gardiner et al., 2016 ; Soekmadji et al., 2018 ), and meeting reports (Araldi et al., 2012 ; Clayton et al., 2018 ; Hu et al., 2017 ; Soares et al., 2017 ), many of which are published in the society's ‘Journal of Extracellular Vesicles’ (JEV) (Lötvall et al., 2012 ). These have played an important role in helping to collate and focus the efforts of the field.…”