Posted on 09/19/2011 1:35:27 PM PDT by Red Badger
A technique that alters T cells has been shown to reduce the amount of virus in infected people.
For the first time, researchers have shown that a cell-based therapy for HIV/AIDS can reduce the amount of virus in infected people. The breakthrough—big news for researchers, who have struggled for decades to create vaccines and cell-based therapies for HIV—was announced on Sunday at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago. To date, the sole treatment for HIV has been multidrug regimens that prolong life but never eliminate the virus.
Sangamo BioSciences of Richmond, California, says it has found a way to protect the T cells that HIV attacks first, so they can live to fight another day. The approach entails temporarily stopping a patient's antiretroviral therapy and removing T cells carrying the CD4 receptor. This surface protein is the doorway by which the virus gains entry into the cell. The collected T cells are exposed to zinc finger nuclease, an enzyme designed to remove the gene for a coreceptor of CD4 called CCR5. The cells are then reinfused into the patient. Once they're back in the body, the new study shows, the cells persist and travel in the body just like normal T cells.
Sangamo's approach is based on the observation that some people have a naturally occurring mutation in the CCR5 gene that protects them against HIV. Ordinarily, humans have two copies of every gene. It turns out that individuals with a mutation in both copies of the CCR5 gene cannot be infected by the most common HIV strains. In people with the so-called Delta-32 mutation in just one copy of the gene, infection rarely progresses to AIDS. In the U.S., about 1 percent of the population is thought to carry the helpful mutation, which some researchers believe arose as protection against the Black Death.
Previous evidence existed showing that CCR5-negative cells could help AIDS patients. In 2007, an American man with AIDS and lymphoma received, as treatment for the cancer, a bone-marrow transplant from a person with the CCR5 mutation. The marrow recipient has been free of both AIDS and cancer since then. Sangamo's method treats a patient's own cells, with less risk than a marrow transplant.
"The data are very encouraging," says Edward Lanphier, Sangamo's founding CEO. "We are seeing a statistically significant correlation between our treatment and viral load reduction. This is a big step forward toward our goal of developing a functional cure for the disease." Lanphier envisions that someday AIDS patients will not need to be on aggressive antiretroviral therapies because their virus will be well-controlled—or even undetectable, as happened with one subject with a mutation in one CCR5 gene.
Experts unaffiliated with Sangamo and its clinical trials agree that the scientific achievement is impressive, but they question the notion that it could yield a functional cure. Gerhard Bauer, assistant professor in the Stem Cell Program at the University of California, Davis, and director of that school's Good Manufacturing Practice laboratory at the Institute for Regenerative Cures, says, "this is a great move forward, to demonstrate reduction of viral load by pushing in modified T cells. It has never been done before by any company, and I congratulate them 100 percent."
The Netherlands has never had a case of HIV transmitted by blood transfusion to a hemophilliac.
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=215786
Any private concern that wants to sink its funds into looking for an HIV cure, or for a cure of anything, that’s wonderful. May they succeed and be rewarded a hundred times over in the business they will get. The big debate comes when Uncle Sam is asked to subsidize things, or government entities are asked to force the cure on everybody.
Someone complained about cancer. Cancer is a tricky thing, really a host of different conditions with one common outcome of unwanted and uncontrollable cell replication. It’s a cliche to hear about how many cancers have been cured in mice where the treatment is then found to be a dud in humans. It will be reined in through a multitude of small conquests, not one large blanket conquest.
Pssst -— see post above.
Why??? Because MARRIAGE is about the dang most important thing in the whole universe to gay people. The fact that they can’t get married is why sooo many of them are at the park at night looking for love, to where you are afraid to even go because there are sooo many of them in the bushes and things. They are there because they can’t get married. I know this because I read it somewhere and if they can get married, then all this stuff will stop. (But I am NOT holding my breath or anything.)
And our attention should be placed on helping people who cannot protect themselves. That is fair.
Sorry to be cold. I just have difficulty getting past the fact that people here in the States brought the suffering upon themselves. They made choices that exposed themselves to the risks all in the name of fun. I can certainly empathize. But when choosing between a person who knowingly accepted the risks and someone who didn't... the decision is pretty easy.
And I ask the question: why would any person have a hundreds of sex partners in their lifetime. That is a heck of a lot. Maybe a commitment, which is a prereq with marriage, it not for that type of person?
Treatment for hemophilia involves concentrates of clotting factors from multiple donors per dose, rather tthan the single donor in the usual blood transfusion. Increasing the number of donors used to make the product magnifies the risk of each dose. Hemophiliacs are therefore e hardest hit.
Or a medical profession, newborn, or spouse of a cheater.
I have much less sympathy for a promiscuous sexual experimenter.
Posted upthread a bit. He claimed the infection occurred in the Netherlands, less than 8 years ago.
The Netherlands has never had a case of HIV transmitted by blood transfusion to a hemophilliac.
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=215786
This is further impossible because, since 1999 (12 years ago), the clotting factor has been genetically engineered and requires no human blood donation.
I read something back when gretawire forum was running one night where there was a real big fight about this. Somebody had numbers from Europe or something about how there were very few gays getting married and there was link and a real good Internet Article, but since gretawire forum was shut down by the Obots, I can’t find it. But if you think about why would a gay person want to get married because it is not like you are going to make any babies or anything.
I don’t know about that, but if it weren’t for the family’s privacy, I’d happily pass along their contact info. Those stats are wrong.
Yes. Agreed.
It would be a hindrance. And divorce is expensive.
Also, I am referring to males. Males, hetero or homo, tend to be the seekers. It is in our nature. Makes sense that male homosexuals would have lots of partners.
OTOH, Lesbians may be more likely to settle down (I guess).
Quarantine?
HIV is not easily transmitted.
Are we still in the dark ages of then 1980s?
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