Gene Therapy Blueprints for NeuroAIDS

Since the start of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, 37 years ago, early work produced evidence for CNS involvement and that HIV-1B infection could penetrate the brain. Since then, a plethora of studies further identified many host proteins, RNAs, and genes implicated in brain involvement consequent to HIV-1B infection. This chapter summarizes the various types of gene therapy platforms available in recent years for neuroAIDS. This is both important and complex and should be validated meticulously to reduce the risk of malfunction of genes and network pathways other than those under the specific molecular treatments intended. Consequently, we describe several of the genes known to be involved in neuroAIDS for potential application for various techniques of gene therapy. With more than 179,962 publications using gene therapy, as of February 27, 2017, where are all the clinically appropriate products applying all this knowledge? Ethical considerations of gene modification are discussed as well.