Medical History made with first cure for HIV infected human

[DarkVision]

Interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/03/us-doctors-cure-child-born-hiv

thoughts?

[bat1]

hope it lasts

[bzzzay]

I read something like this very similar happening years ago. If I remember correctly, the problem is that each person's disease is different, so it cure has to be custom made for the individual.

[DarkVision]

As a doctor myself research into probably cures has ever had everybody on edge like it has now there really does seem to be a breakthrough lets hope a generic cure is developed

[natina]

Man Cured of AIDS Virus: 1st U.S. News Conference


First and Only Man Cured of HIV Wants to Start Foundation



http://www.webmd.com/hiv-aids/news/20120724/man-cured-of-aids-virus-news-conference


Immunity Gene ‘Cures’ Bay Area Man Of AIDS
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) — A 45-year-old man now living in the Bay Area may be the first person ever cured of the deadly disease AIDS, the result of the discovery of an apparent HIV immunity gene.
Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a “functional cure.”

Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem cell transplant that had astounding results.
“I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since,” said Brown, who has been dubbed “The Berlin Patient” by the medical community.
Brown’s amazing progress continues to be monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and at the University of California at San Francisco medical center.
“I’m cured of HIV. I had HIV but I don’t anymore,” he said, using words that many in the scientific community are cautiously clinging to.
Scientists said Brown received stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV. In fact, about one percent of Caucasians are immune to HIV. Some researchers think the immunity gene goes back to the Great Plague: people who survived the plague passed their immunity down and their heirs have it today.
UCSF’s Dr. Jay Levy, who co-discovered the HIV virus and is one of the most respected AIDS researchers in the world, said this case opens the door to the field of “cure research,” which is now gaining more attention.
“If you’re able to take the white cells from someone and manipulate them so they’re no longer infected, or infectable, no longer infectable by HIV, and those white cells become the whole immune system of that individual, you’ve got essentially a functional cure,” he explained.
UCSF’s Dr. Paul Volberding, another pioneering AIDS expert who has studied the disease for all of its 30 years cautioned that while “the Berlin Patient is a fascinating story, it’s not one that can be generalized.”
Both doctors stressed that Brown’s radical procedure may not be applicable to many other people with HIV, because of the difficulty in doing stem cell transplants, and finding the right donor.
“You don’t want to go out and get a bone marrow transplant because transplants themselves carry a real risk of mortality,” Volberding said.
He explained that scientists also still have many unanswered questions involving the success of Brown’s treatment.
“One element of his treatment, and we don’t know which, allowed apparently the virus to be purged from his body,” he observed. “So it’s going to be an interesting, I think productive area to study.”
Volberding continued, “Knock on wood, (Brown) hasn’t had any recurrence now for several years of the virus, and that hasn’t happened before in our experience.”
As a result, at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation some are now using the word “cure” after so many avoided it for decades.
“You sort of felt like you couldn’t say ‘cure’ for a number of years. Scientists and clinicians and people with HIV alike felt that was a promise that was never going to be realized and it was dangerous to direct a lot of energy toward it,” said Dr. Judy Auerbach. “And now things have shifted.”
The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine is currently funding stem cell research in the Bay Area based on Brown’s case in the hopes of replicating his success for broader populations of people with HIV.
The institute said it plans to begin clinical trials next year.
2011 by CBS San Francisco


http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/05/16/apparent-immunity-gene-cures-bay-area-man-of-aids// (http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/05/16/apparent-immunity-gene-cures-bay-area-man-of-aids/)



FDA review favors first drug for HIV prevention


A pill that has long been used to treat HIV has moved one step closer to becoming the first drug approved to prevent healthy people from becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that Gilead Sciences' Truvada appears to be safe and effective for HIV prevention. It concluded that taking the pill daily could spare patients "infection with a serious and life-threatening illness that requires lifelong treatment."
On Thursday a panel of FDA advisers will consider the review when it votes on whether Truvada should be approved as a preventative treatment for people who are at high risk of contracting HIV through sexual intercourse. The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, but it usually does.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/)




http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=55700 (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=55700)

[Jericho]

If it works...Hooray, about time.
Personally, think it's better to avoid it in the first place! :shrug

[natina]

Bone marrow 'cures HIV patient'


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45185000/jpg/_45185394_57190138-5493-4d82-aaeb-06929109a42b.jpgAbout one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have a resistance to HIV

Doctors in Germany say a patient appears to have been cured of HIV by a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had a genetic resistance to the virus.



The researchers in Berlin said the man, who suffered from leukaemia and HIV, had shown no sign of either disease since the transplant two years ago.
But they stressed it was an unusual case which needed further investigation.
Experts said the result may boost interest in gene therapy for HIV.
Berlin's Charite clinic said the 42-year-old patient was an American living in Berlin, but the man has not been identified.
Genetic mutation
He had been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, that causes Aids, for more than a decade and also had leukaemia.The clinic said since the transplant was carried out 20 months ago, tests on the patient's bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clear.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7726118.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7726118.stm


Black Man May Hold The Cure for HIV


Scientists are saying they are one step closer to curing the HIV virus. And the secret lies in the body of a 60-year-old Black man. Pop it for details…
Say whaaat?! The creators of HIV Government scientists say they have found an antibody that kills 91% of HIV strains.


In the latest development, U.S. government scientists say they have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered. They are now deploying the technique used to find those antibodies to identify antibodies to influenza viruses.


The HIV antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. The trick for scientists now is to develop a vaccine or other methods to make anyone’s body produce them as well.


Donor 45′s antibodies didn’t protect him from contracting HIV. That is likely because the virus had already taken hold before his body produced the antibodies. He is still alive, and when his blood was drawn, he had been living with HIV for 20 years.


While he has produced the most powerful HIV antibody yet discovered, researchers say they don’t know of anything special about his genes that would make him unique.


Of course, they say it will take time to develop and will probably be expensive. Basically, you’re gonna need Magic Johnson money to get the vaccine.


http://bossip.com/265318/black-man-may-hold-the-cure-for-hiv/ (http://bossip.com/265318/black-man-may-hold-the-cure-for-hiv/)
http://bossip.com/265318/black-man-may-hold-the-cure-for-hiv/ (http://bossip.com/265318/black-man-may-hold-the-cure-for-hiv/)

[FreddieGomez]

i think it's just an isolated case.

[natina]

LA TIMES:THE KEY antibodies from the blood of a 60-year-old African American A breakthrough in AIDS research


A pair of naturally occurring antibodies are able to kill more than 90% of all strains of HIV, researchers say. The finding could lead to the development of new treatments and a possible vaccine.



July 09, 2010 (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/09)|By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
An effective vaccine against the AIDS virus may have moved one step closer to reality, researchers said Thursday.
Federal researchers have identified a pair of naturally occurring antibodies that are able to kill more than 90% of all strains of the AIDS virus, a finding they say could lead to the development of new treatments for HIV infections and to the production of the first successful vaccine against the virus.




HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is notoriously mutable, changing the composition of proteins on its surface with ease to escape pressure from the immune system. This enables it to continue infecting cells even after the appearance of antibodies targeting it — and to avoid the relatively ineffective vaccines developed so far.
Hundreds of variants of the virus are now in circulation around the world, and the identification of so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies that can block the bulk of them has been the holy grail of HIV researchers.
To date, however, the best antibodies — immune system proteins that fight infections — that researchers have found block only 30% to 40% of all HIV strains. The identification of antibodies that can block more than 90% of strains could lead to what some researchers are dubbing a renaissance in AIDS prevention and treatment.
The key to the new antibodies is that they bind to a site on the virus surface that rarely mutates.
"I am more optimistic about an AIDS vaccine at this point in time than I have been probably in the last 10 years," Dr. Gary Nabel of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Reuters. He led the research reported Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.
Nabel and his colleagues isolated the antibodies from the blood of a 60-year-old African American gay man. Using newly developed imaging and analytical techniques, they found that the two antibodies, called VRC01 and VRC02, bind to a spike on the surface of the virus. This spike interacts with a receptor called the CD4 binding site on the surface of human cells, and when an antibody binds to it, the virus cannot enter a cell.
Because the virus must use CD4 to enter cells, it cannot tolerate mutations in the spike. The composition of the spike is thus pretty much constant in all variants of HIV in circulation.




http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/09/science/la-sci-hiv-antibodies-20100709
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/09/science/la-sci-hiv-antibodies-20100709



http://frenchtribune.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullart/ccr5.jpg




HIV Cell Breakthrough




In a breakthrough, American scientists have succeeded in eradicating HIV from the body by genetically engineering immune cells (T-cells) for making them HIV-resistant.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carl June, gene therapy expert from the University of Pennsylvania, presented the finding at an AIDS conference in Boston this week.
Researchers found by taking blood, removing a single gene called CCR5 from white blood cells or T-cells called CD4 cells most prone to infection by HIV, and then returning the blood to the body of nine HIV-positive patients, halted the spread of HIV, as the disabled T-cells were no longer able to manufacture the protein that attracts the HIV virus.
Following the alteration of the T-cells continuing to multiply in the body, allow it to build up resistance to HIV.


According to researchers, their pioneering treatment of creating HIV resistant T-cells in all nine patients, has shown promise in the first nine HIV infected people to receive it.
Lead scientist Carl June said this was the first example of genetic editing for introducing a disease resistant gene in patients.




http://frenchtribune.com/avis/113703-hiv-cell-breakthrough (http://frenchtribune.com/avis/113703-hiv-cell-breakthrough)
http://frenchtribune.com/avis/113703-hiv-cell-breakthrough (http://frenchtribune.com/avis/113703-hiv-cell-breakthrough)

[natina]

Can a Bone-Marrow Transplant Halt HIV?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.html


Killing AIDS with GML Gel and Cream


Based on new university research, a non-prescription gel or cream containing the safe and natural chemical GML could be on the market immediately, saving lives from dealy HIV/AIDS.


At last, scientists have found the silver bullet to stop the spread of AIDS. A simple gel or cream application of GML (glycerol monolaurate), a common chemical that exists naturally in humans and is safely used in ice cream and cosmetics, has protected monkeys from the HIV virus. Researchers expect the same protection


will be available to humans.

The GML gel
or cream would be applied in the woman's vagina, creating a protective barrier against the virus during sexual intercourse. A dose of GML, based on the new research, will cost less than a penny.

It is expected that the domains (web addresses) www.gmlgel.com (http://www.gmlgel.com/) and www.gmlcream.com (http://www.gmlcream.com/), currently owned by WebTalkerPR, will be acquired by savvy marketers eager to get commercial products into the hands of consumers. So long as no medical claims are made, GML products should be immediately available for sale.

Technically, the GML product would be a microbicide, or germ-killer. In the absence of an AIDS vaccine, microbicides are the best defense against this disease, which has killed more than 25 million people. Worldwide, 16,000 people contract HIV every day -- the majority getting infected through unprotected sex. Thirty-three million people are living with HIV today.

The exciting new GML data came from researchers at the University of Minnesota. Their report, published in the journal Nature, says that GML breaks a 'vicious cycle' of immune-system signaling and inflammatory response in the cervix and vagina. 'This result represents a highly encouraging new lead in the search for an effective microbicide - that meets the criteria of safety, affordability and efficacy,' they write.

Dr. Ashley Haase, who led the study with Patrick Schlievert, said that if GML works as well in humans as it has in monkeys, "It could contribute to saving millions of lives."

Schlievert said there's evidence that GML also may help prevent other sexually-transmitted diseases, such as chlamydia, as well as other types of infections. In theory, women could use the GML gel or cream an hour or so before sex to protect themselves from infection. A GML product for men is also likely to be developed.

The domains www.gmlgel.com (http://www.gmlgel.com/) and www.gmlcream.com (http://www.gmlcream.com/) can be purchased at those addresses, using the 'Buy This Domain - Click Here' email link. Helpful tips on making money from domain sales are at domaineering.wordpress.com.

http://www.pr-inside.com/killing-aid...d-r1095017.htm (http://www.pr-inside.com/killing-aids-with-gml-gel-and-r1095017.htm)

[natina]

FDA review favors first drug for HIV prevention

A pill that has long been used to treat HIV has moved one step closer to becoming the first drug approved to prevent healthy people from becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that Gilead Sciences' Truvada appears to be safe and effective for HIV prevention. It concluded that taking the pill daily could spare patients "infection with a serious and life-threatening illness that requires lifelong treatment."

On Thursday a panel of FDA advisers will consider the review when it votes on whether Truvada should be approved as a preventative treatment for people who are at high risk of contracting HIV through sexual intercourse. The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, but it usually does.

An estimated 1.2 million Americans have HIV, which attacks the immune system and, unless treated with antiviral drugs, develops into AIDS, a fatal condition in which the body cannot fight off infections. If Truvada is approved, it would be a major breakthrough in the 30-year campaign against the AIDS epidemic. There have been no other drugs proven to prevent HIV and a vaccine is believed to be decades away.

Gilead Sciences Inc., based in Foster City, Calif., has marketed Truvada since 2004 as a treatment for people who are infected with the virus. The medication is a combination of two older HIV drugs, Emtriva and Viread. Doctors usually prescribe the medications as part of a drug cocktail that makes it harder for the virus to reproduce. Patients with low viral levels have reduced symptoms and are far less likely to develop AIDS
Researchers first reported that Truvada could prevent people from contracting HIV in 2010. A three-year study found that daily doses cut the risk of infection in healthy gay and bisexual men by 44 percent, when accompanied by condoms and counseling. Another study found that Truvada reduced infection by 75 percent in heterosexual couples in which one partner was infected with HIV and the other was not.

Because Truvada is already on the market to manage HIV, some doctors already prescribe it as a preventive measure. But FDA approval would allow the drugmaker Gilead Sciences to formally market its drug for that use.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/47345265/ns/health-aids/


http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/attachment.php?attachmentid=470547&stc=1&d=1336584768

[natina]

HAVE YOU HEARD?

the news

Bee Venom Kills HIV: Nanoparticles Carrying Toxin Shown To Destroy Human Immunodeficiency Virus (VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/09/bee-venom-kills-hiv-cells_n_2843743.html