A method for managing HIV chemotherapy of HIV positive patients comprises: (a) transfecting an HIV infection-susceptible cell line with an HIV pol gene sequence obtained from a patient and a HIV-DNA construct from which the sequence has been deleted; (b) culturing the transfected cells so as to create a stock of chimeric viruses; (c) assessing the phenotypic sensitivity of the chimeric viruses to an inhibitor of the HIV pol gene-encoded enzyme and assigning a value; (d) constructing a data set comprising the value for chimeric virus sensitivity and the corresponding value for a chimeric wild-type strain of HIV; (e) repeating the sensitivity assessment for at least two further inhibitors and thereby constructing at least three such data sets; (f) representing the data sets in 2-D or 3-D graphical form such that the difference between the chimeric and wild-type sensitivities in each data set provides a visual measure of the resistance of the chimeric stock to treatment by the inhibitor; and (g) selecting the optimum inhibitor(s) on the basis of the graphical representation of the resistances.
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