Emerging Single-cell Approaches to Understand HIV in the Central Nervous System

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review highlights emerging single-cell sequencing methods relevant to translational studies of HIV in the central nervous system (CNS), summarizes limited single-cell studies of HIV in the CNS, and discusses opportunities for future HIV translational CNS studies. RECENT FINDINGS: Innovative methods utilizing single-cell technologies have advanced the study of genomes, proteomes, transcriptomes, and epigenomes at an enhanced resolution and depth. Single-cell analyses of central nervous system tissue, including autopsy brain and CSF cells, may shed light on CNS perturbations in people living with HIV. New strategies can distinguish distinct molecular identifies of rare infected cells at single-cell level, suggesting an opportunity to uncloak the molecular identity of hidden HIV in the CNS reservoir. SUMMARY: Adoption of multimodal “omics” analyses to translational HIV studies and tissue compartments beyond blood will be critical to advancing our understanding of viral establishment, persistence, and eradication.