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Abstract

The present invention is drawn to a method of managing HIV chemotherapy of patients who are HIV positive, by transfecting a cell line susceptible to infection by HIV with a sequence from the pol gene of HIV, which sequence encodes at least one desired target enzyme selected from integrase, protease or reverse transcriptase, obtained by isolating viral RNA from a sample of a biological material from a patient and reverse transcribing the desired region of the pol gene, and a HIV-DNA construct that lacks a sequence encoding the desired target enzyme, culturing the transfected cells so as to create a stock of chimeric viruses, assessing the phenotypic sensitivity of the chimeric viruses to at least one inhibitor of the target enzyme encoded by the pol gene of HIV, and assigning a value thereto, constructing a data set containing the value for chimeric virus sensitivity and the corresponding value for a chimeric wild-type strain of HIV, repeating the sensitivity assessment for at least two further inhibitors and thereby constructing at least three such data sets in total, representing the at least one data sets in two dimensional or three dimensional graphical form such that the difference between the chimeric and wild-type sensitivities in the case of each data set provides a visual measure of the resistance of the chimeric stock to treatment by the inhibitor in question, and selecting the optimum inhibitor(s) on the basis of the graphical representation of the resistances so measured.

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First Claim