Category: Gene therapy
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A recent paper describing the engineering of stem cells to generate HIV-specific CD8 T cells has drawn considerable media attention and, regrettably but not untypically, many of the stories are profoundly misleading. Examples of headlines include: “Scientists engineer stem cells which suppress HIV: cure for AIDS possible” “New breakthrough shows stem cells can be engineered…
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The 19th annual Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place last week from Monday through Thursday in Seattle. As has consistently been the case in recent years, the organizers have done a commendable job in making the conference accessible online: all sessions—including poster discussions—are available via webcast, and very few presenters have failed to make…
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Inaugurated in 2003, the bi-annual International Workshop on HIV Persistence during Therapy (aka “the persistence workshop”) is the brainchild of researcher Alain Lafeuillade. The meeting presaged the recent explosion of interest in pursuing a cure for HIV infection, a pursuit many had considered quixotic until the case of Timothy Brown came to light in 2008.…
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A number of studies have investigated whether control of HIV replication in the absence of treatment (referred to as elite control if viral load is <50 copies and viremic control if <2,000) is associated with having CD4 T cells that are intrinsically resistant to infection. Results to date have shown that elite and viremic controllers…
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In a letter published in the new issue of the journal AIDS, Gero Hütter and Eckhard Thiel provide an update on their efforts to find a second candidate for the stem cell transplant procedure that appears to have cured Timothy Ray Brown of HIV infection. The work has been facilitated by a meeting the doctors…
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At the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections, a piece of paper pinned to a poster board conveyed some surprising information: an HIV-infected man who had received two stem cell transplants for acute myelogenous leukemia (and the dauntingly toxic ablation regimens that go with them) had remained off antiretroviral therapy for nearly ten months…
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Until recently, the idea of genetically modifying a person’s immune system to make it resistant to HIV was generally viewed as extremely appealing, but so dauntingly impractical that it belonged in the realm of science fiction. Over the past year or so, an accumulation of new data has offered hope that it may eventually be…