Figure 1.

Proposed combination of antiretroviral therapy (ART) with Tat inhibitors or other latency-promoting agents (LPAs) in the block-and-lock strategy. With ART, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transcription from the integrated provirus is unaffected, and episodes of detectable viremia or viral load (VL) “blips” are commonly observed (blue line). Treatment interruption (TI) leads to rapid viral rebound. The addition of the Tat inhibitor didehydro–cortistatin A (dCA) or another LPA to ART accelerates viral control via an additional block at HIV transcription, and long-term treatment further promotes heterochromatin formation and silences the provirus epigenetically, which might diminish viral rebound after TI (red dashed line).