Watch HIV spread

The video will pause to let you see important frames. Those green-tinted particles are HIV inside a T-cell.

UK's Telegraph:

The US study has broken new ground by revealing that it is the synapse through which the viral proteins are gathered and moved into uninfected cells.

The team [...] believe that this knowledge could help create new treatments for HIV and AIDS.

"Our findings may explain why attempts to develop an HIV vaccine have so far been unsuccessful."

"The more we know about this mode of transfer, the better chance we have of figuring out how to block it and the spread of HIV and Aids."

For decades it was believed that HIV was mostly spread around the body through freely circulating particles, which attach themselves to a cell, take over its replication machinery and make multiple copies of themselves.

In 2004, scientists discovered that cell-to-cell transfer of HIV also occurred via virological synapses, but it was not understood why the process was so effective in spreading the virus.

Due to this, previous efforts to create an HIV vaccine have focused on priming the immune system to recognise and attack proteins of free-circulating virus. The new video footage indicates that HIV avoids recognition by being directly transferred between cells.

"We should be developing vaccines that help the immune system recognise proteins involved in virological synapse formation and antiviral drugs that target the factors required for synapse formation."

"Direct T-cell-to-T-cell transfer through a virological synapse is a highly efficient avenue of HIV infection, and it could be the predominant mode of dissemination."