Tag: HIV/AIDS

Via press release tonight, the White House announced tonight that the National Institutes of Health have found a way to treat HIV patients without drugs.

Here’s the simple breakdown:  Through gene therapy, scientists extracted white blood cells, modified them to disable the CCR5 cell surface which allows HIV to infect the cells, stimulated the cells to multiply and then returned the cells via infusion to the patient.

Subsequently, HIV replication was kept under control for a 12 week period.

Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease physician at the University of Pennsylvania and study co-author of the study, says “We did not cure anybody with HIV.” But, he continued, we now know that we “can make the cells of each individual resistant to HIV.”

Here’s the full press release:

Scientists today report initial results from humans on the safety and tolerability of a novel strategy to curb HIV disease by removing key cells from HIV-infected individuals, genetically modifying the cells to resist HIV infection and returning them to those people. The basic and pre-clinical research on this strategy, which eventually might help people control the virus without drugs, was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The Phase I clinical trial was funded by Sangamo BioSciences and was led by NIAID grantee Carl H. June, M.D., with co-investigators Bruce L. Levine, Ph.D., and Pablo Tebas, M.D., all of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

The trial built on the observation that people who naturally have a genetic modification in a protein called CCR5 are resistant to HIV infection, and when infected with HIV, progress to AIDS more slowly. CCR5 is a cell-surface molecule, or receptor, that most HIV variants must use to enter their primary target: the CD4+ T cell. In the trial, CD4+ T-cells were collected from each of 12 HIV-infected volunteers whose virus was controlled by anti-HIV therapy. These cells were then treated in the laboratory with molecular tools called zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs). The ZFNs were designed to snip the DNA within the gene that codes for the CCR5 receptor. This process introduced a genetic mutation rendering CCR5 receptors non-functional. Subsequently, the cells were stimulated to multiply, and each patient received an infusion of 10 billion of their own CD4+ T-cells, with roughly a fifth of the CCR5 genes now mutated.

Four weeks later, in a planned interruption of anti-HIV therapy, half the study participants stopped taking their antiretroviral drugs for 8 to 12 weeks. Investigators found that the experimental treatment was generally safe, and that the genetically modified cells appeared to be protected from HIV infection. In one volunteer who naturally had the desired mutation in half of his CCR5 genes, HIV replication was controlled during the entire 12-week treatment interruption. Future research will include evaluating this experimental treatment in more volunteers, as well as maximizing the frequency of CCR5 disruption by ZFNs and increasing the persistence of the genetically modified cells in the body to achieve a therapeutic effect.

The results of two separate studies suggest that an injection of HIV medication Truvada every one to three months could protect people from infection.

Truvada is currently available by prescription as a daily oral medication to help protect those most “at risk” from HIV infection.

Recent studies of a new, long-acting injectable form of the drug showed strong promise for long-term protection.

From Yahoo News:

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave six monkeys shots of the drug every four weeks; six others got dummy shots. All were exposed to the virus twice a week for 11 weeks.

The monkeys who got the fake treatment were readily infected “but the animals that received the long-acting drug remained protected,” said study leader Gerardo Garcia-Lerma of the CDC.

The results mirror what was seen in the CDC’s early research in monkeys on Truvada, the pill that’s available for HIV prevention now.

In the second study, Chasity Andrews and others at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University in New York gave eight monkeys two shots of the drug, four weeks apart, and dummy shots to eight others. The animals were exposed to the virus weekly for eight weeks. Again, all animals given the fake treatment were quickly infected and those on the drug were all protected.

To see how long a single shot would last, they did a second study. The single shot protected 12 monkeys for about 10 weeks on average.

The dose used in a single shot corresponded to what people would get from a shot every three months, researchers said.

“This is really promising,” said Dr. Judith Currier, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles. The research “supports moving this forward” into human testing, she said.

This is obviously very exciting news. I will say, though, that at this point in time the best way to avoid infection from HIV and other STDs is to use a condom regularly.

Until we have the absolute green light from the scientific/medical powers that be, play safe!

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware has introduced the “Repeal HIV Discrimination Act,” which calls for an inter-agency wide review of state and federal laws targeting people living with HIV and AIDS. The Guardian reports:

His proposed federal legislation is targeted at 32 U.S. States that retain laws making it illegal to not declare HIV status to sexual partners, regardless of whether there is a risk of transmission. Thirteen of these states also criminalize non-sexual acts, such as spitting, even though transmission by saliva is now thought impossible in such cases.

Coons, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, said such policies unfairly stigmatize the disease by applying differing legal standards for people with HIV, who can still be prosecuted for deliberate transmission of the virus under other criminal laws.

“It’s simply not fair that someone having been diagnosed with a chronic, treatable medical condition should automatically be subject to a different set of criminal laws,” he said.

“A disturbing number of state and local criminal laws pertaining to individuals with HIV/AIDS are rooted not in science, but outdated fear. Rather than recognizing that HIV/AIDS is a treatable medical condition, these laws perpetuate the idea that HIV is a deadly weapon and people with HIV are dangerous criminals.”

The House companion bill was introduced back in May by Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).

(via Towleroad)