BREAKING NEWS!: Immunity Gene ‘Cures’ Bay Area Man Of AIDS

[natina]

anyone heard anymore news?

[ELAGESE]

essentially what they're saying is they have a better TREATMENT for AIDS and there is NO CURE FOR HIV virus. A good t-cell count status in relation to everything else in the body doesn't mean someone is cured from HIV or aids. It's interesting medical research though, thanks for the link.

[natina]

ITS A CURE! thats whats being said

bone marrow transplant which is a cancer treatment

is a cure.

HIV can not replicate with this bone marrow transplant

which is a cancer treatment

YOU HAVE A READING COMPREHENSION ISSUE

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/201...a-man-of-aids/

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

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|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...odies-20100709
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul...odies-20100709

[natina]

anyone participating in the treatment trial runs?

[loveboof]

A bone marrow transplant using stem cells from an HIV immune donor, is not a viable universal AIDS cure. But sounds like a step in the right direction

[natina]

some people have a reading comprehension problem


this is a cure for anyone infected

[ELAGESE]

natina YOU have the reading comprehension issue. I read about his case and stopping the spread of HIV in his body does not mean he rid himself of the virus. He still has it and "cure" is a misleading term at this stage of the research.. He's better off now from the bone marrow transplant, but it's not a true cure. Treatment does not equal cure, that's all I'm saying...

[Helvis2012]

tsbrenda = natina

Sure seems like it.

[Imakeiteazy]

Good luck trying to survive a bone marrow transplant.... survival rate runs between %48-%55

Significant breakthrough in science and medicine.... I'm not sure why this isn't making headline news!