Researchers at City of Hope were awarded $32.3 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to support three novel phase I clinical trials evaluating innovative cell and gene therapy treatments for patients with HIV, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and severe aplastic anemia.
For people living with HIV, the single greatest achievement to date has been the emergence of antiretroviral treatments (ART) that completely block the virus, resulting in reduced mortality and morbidity and improved quality of life. But taking one pill a day for life cannot be the end of this journey, speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia.
It has gone unnoticed in HIV research until now, but a transcriptomic analysis has detected a molecule that could kill this virus. Scientists at a U.S. military research institute laboratory have found a common factor in human cells that inhibited the replication of HIV-1 in people living with the virus. “Without any manipulation of cells in people with HIV, we have found a host factor that is inhibiting HIV in vivo,” the senior author Rasmi Thomas, chief of the Laboratory of Integrative Multiomics at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, told BioWorld. Using single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), the study published on Aug. 2, 2023, in Science Translational Medicine identified this host factor as prothymosin α, a protein isolated from the thymus in 1966 and described in 1984.
A study of the genetic determinants of HIV viral load in 3,879 people of African ancestries has found what is claimed to be the only new variant related to HIV infection discovered in more than two decades of research into how host genomics affects the response to the retrovirus.
For people living with HIV, the single greatest achievement to date has been the emergence of antiretroviral treatments (ART) that completely block the virus, resulting in reduced mortality and morbidity and improved quality of life. But taking one pill a day for life cannot be the end of this journey, speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia. Even with the success of ART, drug adherence remains a problem due to pill fatigue or depression and other mental health conditions, as well as drug-drug interactions, said Claudia Cortes, associate professor at the University of Chile in Santiago. New drugs that are longer lasting, more convenient, and affordable are desperately needed, she said.
Researchers from Laboratoire Biodim presented the discovery of novel HIV-1 integrase-LEDGF allosteric inhibitors (INLAIs), designed to share the binding site on the viral protein with the host factor LEDGF/p75. INLAIs act as molecular glues to promote hyper-multimerization of HIV-1 integrase protein to produce defective progeny virions, and as such, severely disrupt maturation of viral particles.
Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) have the potential to prevent HIV, and more researchers are turning to bNAbs as an alternative to antiretroviral therapy (ART), speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia. However, for a cure, the viral reservoir that is formed in the early stages of HIV remains an obstacle, and recent studies suggest that controlling or eliminating the HIV reservoir with bNAbs might be possible.
Although huge strides have been made with antiretroviral therapy (ART) and prevention since HIV was first reported 42 years ago, there is still not an effective preventive vaccine or a scalable cure for those living with HIV. But broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) look to be a further step down the pathway to a cure, speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia.
Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) have the potential to prevent HIV, and more researchers are turning to bNAbs as an alternative to antiretroviral therapy (ART), speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia.
Although huge strides have been made with antiretroviral therapy (ART) and prevention since HIV was first reported 42 years ago, there is still not an effective preventive vaccine or a scalable cure for those living with HIV. But broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) look to be a further step down the pathway to a cure, speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia.
