Category: Immune-based therapies
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The IAS HIV Cure & Cancer Forum was held at the renowned cancer research center Institut Curie in Paris on July 22 & 23 of this year. A report from the meeting, authored by Genevieve E. Martin, José Alcami, Jean-Phillipe Spano and Anna Laura Ross, has just been published in the open access Journal of Virus…
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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 holy grails in cure research is the discovery of markers that would allow the specific targeting of cells harboring latent HIV. The goal is to be able flag those cells for elimination while sparing their uninfected counterparts. So far, a number of cellular receptors have been identified as being more commonly—but not exclusively—…
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Since the earliest days of HIV research, the idea of trying to enhance immune responses to the virus using therapeutic vaccination has been extensively explored, but with little success. The ability of the virus to compromise CD4 T cells, which would normally coordinate antiviral immunity, may be one contributor to the generally disappointing results. Virus-induced…
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This week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two independent studies describe results obtained by blocking type 1 interferon signaling pathways in humanized mouse models of chronic HIV infection. The papers are both open access (see Anjie Zhen et al and Liang Cheng et al). Type 1 interferons are cytokines that interact with specific receptors…
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A study published last Thursday in the journal Science has hit the headlines, reporting that sustained post-treatment control of SIV has been achieved in macaques using an antibody therapy developed for the treatment of inflammatory gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. The antibody targets α4β7, a receptor expressed on CD4 T cells (and other immune system cells) that is involved…
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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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The Journal of Clinical Investigation has published a collection of reviews on HIV cure research edited by Robert Siliciano. The articles are not open access unfortunately, but a day pass for the journal’s website (which allows downloading of all PDFs) costs $10 which is relatively affordable compared to many other publishers. Recent developments in the effort…
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In an example of publication kismet, three recent open access articles all converge in describing a new strategy for depleting the HIV reservoir. The research involves engineering antibodies or antibody-like molecules capable of simultaneously binding two targets: the CD3 receptor, a human protein expressed on T cells, and parts of the HIV envelope (Env) protein,…
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Cytokines are a family of proteins that play important roles in immune cell communication. The best-known example is interleukin-2 (IL-2), which is FDA-approved as a therapy for kidney cancer. Many cytokines have been evaluated in HIV infection and one of the latest candidates being considered for human testing is IL-21. Laboratory and animal model research…