AIDS Research Center (ARC)
May 15, 2026
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HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the etiologic agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is still the worst exemplar of a human-tropic, persistence-prone virus. In natural infection it is rarely eliminated from the infected host, and viral production continues both actively and intermittently.
Strenuous efforts over the past four decades, including those of Japanese scientists, have led to development of multiple types of antiretroviral drugs and resultant combined antiretroviral therapy (cART). While these approaches significantly halt AIDS prognosis, they usually do not lead to virus elimination. cART cessation basically results in viral rebound, and drug resistance challenges persist.
Furthermore, due to the distinct immune-perturbing nature of HIV, we have learned that conventional vaccine modalities are extremely difficult to develop. As such, multiple layers of alternative and/or next-generation approaches are urgently required.
Thus, overcoming HIV infection faces its unique difficulty, which is especially noticeable when compared with the global effort to rationally and empirically overcome the COVID-19 pandemic based on the explosive ensemble of basic, clinical, and epidemiological science. While literature searched with the term “COVID” reaches 50 million hits (as of May 2026) on Pubmed, “HIV” closely matches this with 46 million hits.
NIID AIDS Research Center, updating the contemporary trends and advances of HIV/retroviral infection and related countermeasures, aims to generate novel strategies to overcome HIV infection. This will be based on our strength in cutting-edge cross-disciplinary biology, as well as our legacy of department-based multi-scale approaches to contain domestic and international infection.
14 May 2026
Hiroyuki Yamamoto
Director, ARC, NIID, JIHS