Bone-Marrow Transplant Appears to Halt HIV
The findings signal promise for new therapies in development.
Emily Singer 11/10/2008
- 6 Comments
A carefully selected bone-marrow transplant for a leukemia patient appears to have stopped the patient's HIV infection: he shows no signs of the virus in his blood nearly two years after the procedure. While it's difficult to draw any conclusions from a single case, the outcome gives hope for new avenues for AIDS treatment.
Some people are genetically resistant to HIV infection, even when they engage in frequent high-risk behavior--a fact that hematologist Gero Hütter wanted to take advantage of when faced with a 42-year-old patient with both leukemia and HIV. The patient needed a bone-marrow transplant, so Hütter searched compatible blood donors for a specific genetic mutation known to protect against most strains of HIV. Doctors then irradiated the patient's immune system and transfused the donor cells.
The transplant surgeons halted his HIV drugs to give the new cells time to take root. They planned to resume the drugs once HIV was found in the patient's blood. But according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the virus never came back.
Nearly two years later, standard tests haven't detected virus in his blood, or in the brain and rectal tissues where it often hides . . . Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.
The treatment is unlikely to be broadly applicable: only about two-thirds of cancer patients survive the procedure. But scientists may be able to mimic the effect by reengineering patients' own cells. Doctors are already testing gene-therapy treatments that target the gene that renders some people immune to the virus.
According to the WSJ,
While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke, David Baltimore, who won a Nobel prize for his research on tumor viruses, deemed it "a very good sign" and a virtual "proof of principle" for gene-therapy approaches. Dr. Baltimore and his colleague, University of California at Los Angeles researcher Irvin Chen, have developed a gene therapy strategy against HIV that works in a similar way to the Berlin case. Drs. Baltimore and Chen have formed a private company to develop the therapy.
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rkomatsu
52 Comments
Prior art
By 1989 and again by 1996 I offered a suggestion to researchers (Veronese, infectiologist in Brazil) of a Xenotransplant procedure for AIDS treatment. Kill the patient's immune system and transplant the bone marrow of a simian (immune to HIV). I was not aware at the time that there were humans immune to HIV - if I knew my idea would be exactly what has supposedly been done.
Reply
Guest (Omnivore)
Re: Prior Art
Damn....and you didn't get credit for it! What a shame....well, this is a good case for writing academic papers when you have good ideas like that (so you are credited with the idea when someone else executes it).
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rkomatsu
52 Comments
Re: Prior Art
I'm an Electrical Engineer with a broad range of interests, but never wrote a paper myself. I was not taken seriously by the first researcher back in 1989, but Veronese in 1996 actually sent this idea and another one to Universities in the USA. I was not seeking credit, just trying to help. The other idea was a virus anti-virus - part of this idea appeared on a brain mapping technique used by Salk Institute, most likely devised independently.
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lycaass
1 Comment
Re: Prior Art
Ideas are worthless, execution is everything.
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gdingle
3 Comments
Re: Prior Art
Great ideas come from the minds of men.
Reply