About the session

The major obstacle to reaching a cure for HIV is establishing a persistent latent reservoir that is unaffected by current HIV treatment regimens and causes viral rebound upon therapy cessation. Over the past years, digital PCR (dPCR) methods gained rapid interest in accurately measuring and monitoring the (intact) HIV reservoir size, especially in the context of clinical trials, which aim to determine reservoir dynamics or changes upon curative treatment challenges.

Here, Dr. Trypsteen will present the combination of up to five HIV assays into a single “rainbow” dPCR reaction and evaluate its benefits and technical performance on cell line and patient-derived samples. These assays can increase the information retrieved from a single dPCR readout over the current existing assays, reducing cost and time and improving the estimation of the intact latent HIV reservoir, which is the origin and cause of viral rebound.

Speakers

Wim Trypsteen
Ghent University, Belgium.
Wim Trypsteen is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University with a decade of experience in digital PCR technology ranging from assay development to generating new data analysis algorithms. He has a special interest in the use of nucleic acid quantification to aid clinical and therapeutic decision-making and his main area of work has been in the field of infectious diseases/pathogen detection (HIV). He is the co-founder of the UGent Digital PCR consortium which has the goal to introduce dPCR to a broader audience, develop and share expertise on several of the commercial dPCR platforms and offer benchmark opportunities to evaluate cross-platform performance.