Associated Press - Monday, December 23, 2002

Evidence of the virus in the blood cells of macaques dropped 50-fold and its evidence in plasma fell 1,000-fold in the test, which lasted 10 months, said researcher Wei Lu of Rene Descartes University in Paris, who led the team that studied the animals.

Unlike the preventive vaccines used to keep people and animals from catching a disease, this work deals with a therapeutic vaccine given to an infected person or animal in hopes of helping them fight the disease by increasing their immune response.

The findings, focusing on SIV -- the monkey form of HIV, the AIDS virus that affects humans -- are being published today in the online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

"This study has opened the possibility of treating HIV infection" using immune cells that have been exposed to a weakened form of virus, Lu reported.

Nina Bhardwaj of New York University and Bruce Walker of Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital said the experiments "suggest that immunotherapy may indeed be a realistic goal."

But they added that questions about the type of macaques used and some other aspects of the work "must temper enthusiasm until the results can be confirmed."

In the experiment, 10 macaques that had been infected with SIV were vaccinated using a type of cell called dendritic cells, which had been exposed to chemically inactivated SIV. Dendritic cells are strong producers of antigens that battle diseases.

The macaques were given five injections over two months. While the virus was not eliminated, it was sharply reduced in seven of them as long as 10 months later.

In January, researchers at Harvard University, working on an AIDS vaccine for monkeys, reported the virus was able to overcome their vaccine by changing a single gene.

"The problem raised by Harvard researchers is a very serious one," Lu commented.

The virus did not mutate to develop immunity in the seven macaques that maintained their resistance to SIV in the French experiment.

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