Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - Monday October 13 6:22 PM EDT
Andrea Orr
The company, Cell Genesys Inc (CEGE), said its findings offered hope of a new treatment that would not just suppress the AIDS virus, but eradicate it altogether.
Trials have so far been completed only in cells in a laboratory setting, so there is no indication that the treatment will work as effectively in practice. But Cell Genesys has studies under way in humans, and said it expects to report results of a Phase II clinical trial some time next year.
The company collaborated on the study with the Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Results of the trial are published in the Oct. 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While drug combinations currently being given to AIDS patients have been highly successful in driving down viral load to undetectable levels, they have not been able to attack pockets of the virus that remain in the cells.
As a result, when patients go off the drugs, their viral loads shoot back up. "This suggests that there are reservoirs of the virus remaining in the body just waiting to replicate," said Margo Roberts, principal scientist at Cell Genesys.
Cell Genesys' gene therapy is based on altering human immune cells so they can work as well as they could before they were depleted by the HIV virus.
"We're basically giving the patients what they are missing --- their own immune response against the virus," Roberts explained.
She said the genetically modified cells attack the two main reservoirs for the HIV virus: T cells and another kind of immune cell known as macrophages. Other antiviral drugs currently in use have not been able to attack the HIV resting in the macrophages.
In practice, the treatment would be administered by collecting a patient's T cells through a process similar to a blood test, and modifying those cells outside the body. The altered cells would be replicated until there were enough of them to pose a potent attack, and then put back into the body.
Cell Genesys, which is based in Foster City, California, has also developed other gene therapies it is testing in cancer.
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