Broadly neutralizing antibodies are one of the most powerful weapons against HIV. And like everything that is effective in the fight against HIV, they are hard to come by.
Barely more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there are five approved vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 available in the U.S. Forty years into the HIV pandemic, there are none. That contrast was repeatedly made by speakers at the 2022 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI).
At the 2022 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), investigators reported on a fourth patient who has achieved HIV remission after a stem cell transplant. The patient is the first woman and the first mixed-race person to achieve HIV remission through a transplant procedure. In 2017, she was transplanted with cord blood stem cells lacking a functional CCR5 receptor, which prevents HIV from entering cells.
Gilead Sciences Inc. is making a one-time $1.25 billion payment, with a commitment for a royalty that analysts predict could add as much $1.5 billion more, to Viiv Healthcare Ltd., in a deal designed to resolve all global pending or potential patent infringement claims relating to sales of HIV drug Biktarvy (bictegravir/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide). The initial payment, recorded in the fourth quarter of 2021, put a significant dent in Gilead’s earnings per share but removes the uncertainty of a trial outcome and clears the way for future bictegravir-containing products.
What one analyst called “the single most important” nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor in development – Merck & Co. Inc.’s islatravir – has met rocky terrain, with the firm and its partner, Gilead Sciences Inc., pausing combo trials.
Investigators from the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard have reported new details on a so-called exceptional elite controller, a patient who has rid herself of an HIV infection.
A closely watched phase IIb test of JNJ-9220, an investigational HIV vaccine regimen developed by Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Vaccines & Prevention BV, has been stopped because the regimen provided insufficient protection against HIV infection. Though safe, the candidate's efficacy was just 25.2%, according to statisticians who analyzed data from the study, called Imbokodo. Further analysis of the study will continue, and the study was deemed to have provided sufficient data for further immunological correlates research, according to J&J.
Finding a functional cure to HIV is one of the biggest challenges in modern medicine, a task made so much tougher because of the virus’s ability to incorporate itself permanently into a host’s genome. But Diaccurate SAB, of Paris, thinks it may have a solution – and it’s all down to a discovery showing that the virus seems to make crucial immune CD4 cells go “bumpy”, lose their function and die.
China’s NMPA gave conditional approval to Henan Sincere Biotech Co. Ltd.’s dual-targeting, oral HIV drug, azvudine, to treat HIV-1-infected adult patients with high viral loads. Azvudine could challenge lamivudine, a drug extensively used for treating HIV infection.
The complete relegation of conferences to cyberspace that began with one HIV conference, CROI 2020, ended with another, the 2021 IAS meeting. Though the conference was still largely virtual, there was also an in-person component held in Berlin.
