Category: Gene therapy
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The annual Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place in Seattle from February 13th-16th, offering a dizzying parade of new data. Webcasts of presentations and PDF files of posters were rapidly placed online and are accessible via the CROI website. A Fillip for Kick & Kill On the cure research front, the results…
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One of the more futuristic-sounding ideas for curing HIV infection involves trying to remove the genome of the virus from the genome of the cells into which it has integrated. On paper, the idea is very appealing, but there are a multitude of challenges associated with trying to identify integrated HIV DNA (referred to as…
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The 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place in Boston from February 22-25. CROI deserves kudos for pioneering comprehensive webcasting, and all sessions are available for viewing online. Results from several significant cure-related clinical trials were debuted during the meeting (links to the webcasts are in parentheses): Ole Søgaard from Aarhus University in…
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Last week saw a slew of news emerge from the IAS 2015 conference and related satellite meetings in Vancouver. Below are links to some presentations of possible interest and information on how to find materials online. 2015 Towards an HIV Cure Symposium On July 18 & 19, immediately preceding the main conference, the fifth IAS Towards…
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A paper published yesterday in Nature has stirred considerable excitement and widespread media coverage. Led by the laboratory of Michael Farzan at The Scripps Research Institute, the research involves a newly designed inhibitor of HIV named eCD4-Ig. The inhibitor is designed to bind the HIV envelope at sites that attach to CD4 and CCR5 molecules…
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A letter published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine describes the outcome of a recent attempt to repeat the HIV cure achieved in Timothy Brown. An HIV-positive individual requiring stem cell transplantation for the treatment of cancer (anaplastic large-cell lymphoma) was matched with a donor homozygous for the CCR5Δ32 mutation, which renders cells…
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Recently there have been two widely publicized updates relating to SB728-T, a gene therapy for HIV infection developed by Sangamo BioSciences. On Wednesday March 5th the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published results from a phase I study conducted by Pablo Tebas and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, and on the following day at…
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Coverage of some subjectively selected presentations from the recent CROI meeting in Atlanta, in addition to the prior post on the case report of a potentially functionally cured infant. Gene Modification of Virus-Specific CD4 T Cells Patrick Younan from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center delivered an interesting talk about transplantation of gene-modified stem cells in…
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On January 16, a scientist named David Harrich and his institution, the Queensland Institute for Medical Research (QIMR) in Brisbane, Australia, issued a press release invoking the word cure in an effort to publicize a scientific paper containing in vitro (lab dish) study results of uncertain significance at best. The release spawned a maelstrom of misleading media…
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In November 2011, the laboratory of Nobel laureate David Baltimore published encouraging results from humanized mouse studies of an approach to HIV prevention they have named vectored immunoprophylaxis (assigned the slightly uncomfortable acronym VIP). The strategy involves the use of adeno-associated virus (AAV) as a vector to deliver genes that make broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV…