Leading articles Rapid biochemical assays for phenotypic drug resistance testing of HIV-1

drugs has significantly reduced the rate of HIV and AIDS-related morbidity and mortality. To date, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 19 antiretroviral drugs for treatment of HIV-1 infections, including 16 unique inhibitors of either HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) or protease. Selecting a combination regimen that maximally suppresses virus replication is critical for treatment success, since failure to achieve viral suppression may result in the emergence of viruses carrying drug resistance mutations. Drug-resistant viruses may be selected from pre-existing viral quasispecies or may be generated de novo. The generation of drug-resistant variants is a consequence of the high mutation rates and replication of HIV-1. If an HIV-1-infected person produces an estimated 1010 virions daily and each genome contains an average of one mutation, every possible singl