Sara Morón-López

• PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biomedicine / MSc in AIDS Pathogenesis and Treatment / MSc in Biomedicine / BSc in Biotechnology
• PostDoc Position at IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute

Background: Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has improved the clinical management of HIV-1 infection. However, little is known about how the latest ART recommendations affect the heterogeneity of HIV-1 reservoir size. Methods: We used a complete statistical approach to outline parameters underlying diversity in HIV-1 reservoir size in a cohort of 89...

Combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) suppresses viral replication to undetectable levels, reduces mortality and morbidity, and improves the quality of life of people living with HIV (PWH). However, ART cannot cure HIV infection because it is unable to eliminate latently infected cells. HIV latency may be regulated by different HIV transcription...

Background Persistence of viral reservoirs has been observed in people with HIV (PWH), despite long-term ART, and likely contributes to chronic immune activation and inflammation. Obefazimod is a novel drug that inhibits HIV-1 replication and reduces inflammation. Here we assess whether obefazimod is safe and might impact HIV-1 persistence, chronic...

Most individuals acutely infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) exhibit mild symptoms. However, 10 to 20% of those infected develop long-term symptoms, referred to as post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) condition (PCC). One hypothesis is that PCC might be exacerbated by viral persistence in tissue sanctuarie...

Background The potential role of the gut microbiome as a predictor of immune-mediated HIV-1 control in the absence of antiretroviral therapy (ART) is still unknown. In the BCN02 clinical trial, which combined the MVA.HIVconsv immunogen with the latency-reversing agent romidepsin in early-ART treated HIV-1 infected individuals, 23% (3/13) of partici...

We developed a new assay that can distinguish and quantify intact (potentially infectious) as well as defective HIV RNA. In ART-treated individuals, we found that the vast majority of all HIV RNA is defective at the 3′ end, possibly due to incomplete transcriptional processivity.

There is a lack of evidence of the health impacts due to long COVID among children and young people (CYP). The objective of this study is to determine the main clinical characteristics of long COVID in CYP and to investigate the academic, social, and health status impacts of long COVID in this population. An observational, descriptive, and longitud...

From March to September 2020, researchers working at a biomedical scientific campus in Spain faced two lockdowns and various mobility restrictions that affected their social and professional lifestyles. The working group “Women in Science,” which acts as an independent observatory of scientific gender inequalities on campus launched an online surve...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection became a pandemic in 2020 and by March 2022 had caused more than 479 million infections and 6 million deaths worldwide. Several acute and long-term symptoms have been reported in infected adults, but it remains unclear whether children/adolescents also experience persistent...

Although there have been great advancements in the field of HIV treatment and prevention, there is no cure. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. In addition to genetic differences between the two types of HIV, HIV-2 infection causes a slower disease progression, and the rate of new HIV-2 infections has dramatically decreased since 2003. Lik...

T cells residing in mucosal tissues play important roles in homeostasis and defense against microbial pathogens. The gut and female reproductive tract (FRT) are both tolerogenic environments, but they differ in the kinds of foreign Ags they need to tolerate. How these different environments influence the properties of their T cells is poorly unders...

Background: Antiretroviral therapy (ART) intensification and disruption of latency have been suggested as strategies to eradicate HIV. ABX464 is a novel antiviral that inhibits HIV RNA biogenesis. We investigated the effect of ABX464 on HIV transcription and total and intact HIV DNA in CD4 + T cells from ART-suppressed participants enrolled in the...

Introduction Sex-specific differences affect multiple aspects of HIV infection, yet few studies have quantified HIV levels in tissues from women. Since an HIV functional cure will likely require a major reduction of infected cells from most tissues, we measured total and intact HIV DNA and the HIV transcription profile in blood, gut, genital tract...

Current efforts aimed at finding a definitive cure for HIV-1 infection are hampered mainly by the persistence of a viral reservoir in latently infected cells. While complete viral eradication from the body remains elusive, finding a functional cure to enable control of viremia without the need for continuous treatment is a key goal.

It is unclear what mechanisms govern latent HIV infection in vivo or in primary cell models. To investigate these questions, we compared the HIV and cellular transcription profile in three primary cell models and peripheral CD4⁺ T cells from HIV-infected ART-suppressed individuals using RT-ddPCR and RNA-seq. All primary cell models recapitulated th...

The HIV reservoir is the main barrier to eradicating HIV infection, and resting memory CD4 T (Trm) cells are one of the most relevant cellular component harboring latent proviruses. This is the first study analyzing the transcriptional profile of Trm cells, in two well-characterized groups of HIV patients with distinct mechanisms of viral replicati...

Background: Human genetic variation-mostly in the HLA and CCR5 regions-explains 25% of the variability in progression of HIV infection. However, it is also known that viral infections can modify cellular DNA methylation patterns. Therefore, changes in the methylation of CpG islands might modulate progression of HIV infection. Methods: 85 samples...

Kick&kill strategies combining drugs aiming to reactivate the viral reservoir with therapeutic vaccines to induce effective cytotoxic immune responses hold potential to achieve a functional cure for HIV-1 infection. Here, we report on an open-label, single-arm, phase I clinical trial, enrolling 15 early-treated HIV-1-infected individuals, testing t...

Background: Initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) soon after HIV-1 infection limits the establishment of viral reservoirs. Thus, early treated individuals are preferred candidates to evaluate novel viral remission strategies. However, their cART-dependent HIV-1 DNA decay dynamics are still poorly defined. This can hamper the desi...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2019.05.009.].

Therapeutic vaccinations aim to re-educate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1-specific immune responses to achieve durable control of HIV-1 replication in virally suppressed infected individuals after antiretroviral therapy (ART) is interrupted. In a double blinded, placebo-controlled phase IIa multicenter study, we investigated the safety and im...

Background: HIV-infected cell lines are widely used to study latent HIV infection, which is considered the main barrier to HIV cure. We hypothesized that these cell lines differ from each other and from cells from HIV-infected individuals in the mechanisms underlying latency. Results: To quantify the degree to which HIV expression is inhibited b...

Background: Strong and broad antiviral T-cell responses targeting vulnerable sites of HIV-1 will likely be a critical component for any effective cure strategy. Methods: BCN01 trial was a phase I, open-label, non-randomized, multicenter study in HIV-1-positive individuals diagnosed and treated during early HIV-1 infection to evaluate two vaccina...

BACKGROUND: Optimization of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) can impact the HIV reservoir. We evaluated the effect on the HIV reservoir in peripheral blood and ileum biopsies of switching from boosted protease inhibitor (PI)-based therapy to dolutegravir (DTG)-based therapy. METHODS: INDOOR is a phase IV open-label clinical trial that rand...

Objectives: Reversing HIV-1 latency has been suggested as a strategy to eradicate HIV-1. We investigated the effect of romidepsin on the HIV transcription profile in participants from the REDUC part B clinical trial. Design: Seventeen participants on suppressive antiretroviral therapy were vaccinated with six doses of the therapeutic vaccine Vac...

Objective: The efficacy of therapeutic vaccines against HIV-1 infection has been modest. New inerts to redirect responses to vulnerable sites are urgently needed to improve these results. Design: We performed the first-in-human clinical trial with naked mRNA (iHIVARNA) combining a DC activation strategy (TriMix:CD40L+CD70+caTLR4 RNA) with a nove...

Background: Monotherapy with ritonavir-boosted PIs (PI/r) has been used to simplify treatment of HIV-1-infected patients. In previous studies raltegravir intensification evidenced ongoing viral replication and reduced T cell activation, preferentially in subjects receiving PI-based triple ART. However, data about low-level viral replication and it...

Introduction: Vaccines may be key components of a curative strategy for HIV-1. We investigated whether a novel immunogen, HIVconsv, designed to re-direct T cell responses to conserved viral epitopes, could impact the HIV-1 reservoir in chronic antiretroviral therapy (ART)-treated subjects when delivered by modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA). Me...

Background The implementation of successful strategies to achieve an HIV cure has become a priority in HIV research. However, the current location and size of HIV reservoirs is still unknown since there are limited tools to evaluate HIV latency in viral sanctuaries such as gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). As reported in the so called “Boston...

Background: Several host factors contribute to HIV disease progression in the absence of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). Among them, the CC-chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) is known to be the main coreceptor used by HIV-1 to enter target cells during the early stages of an HIV-1 infection. Objective: We evaluated the association of CCR5((W...

Long-term treatment with interferon (IFN) alfa plus ribavirin decreases the proviral human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) DNA level. However, the short-term impact of IFN alfa on persistent HIV and its effects on immune activation after antiretroviral therapy remain unknown. Our study showed that the cell-associated HIV RNA level and CD4+ T-ce...

Background: Allogeneic donor CCR5 Δ32 homozygous haemopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) provides the only evidence to date of long-term control of HIV infection. However, availability of conventional CCR5 Δ32 homozygous donors is insufficient to develop this as a therapeutic strategy further. Methods: We present a 37-year-old patient with HIV-1...

Allogeneic HCT from a CCR5 Δ32/Δ32 unrelated donor by Hutter et al provides the only evidence to date of long term control of HIV infection, and a compelling argument in favor of homozygous CCR5 Δ32reconstitution as the key mechanism driving resistance to infection 6 years after stopping antiretroviral therapy (ART). Low prevalence of Δ32/Δ32 genot...

Previous in-vitro data pointed out lithium, an activator of the beta-catenin signalling pathway, as a modulator of HIV-1 transcription. We assessed the effect of in-vivo administration of lithium on viral latency modulation in nine antiretroviral therapy (ART)-suppressed HIV-1-infected individuals. We found that lithium carbonate treatment was able...