AIDS TREATMENT NEWS Issue #207, September 16, 1994
The six principal investigators are:
* Phillip Greenberg, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle;
* Judy Lieberman, M.D., Ph.D., New England Medical Center, Boston;
* Thomas Merigan, M.D., Stanford University, Stanford, California;
* Gary Nabel, M.D., Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
* Flossie Wong-Staal, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego; and
* David Weiner, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Most of these projects involve removing immune-system cells from persons with HIV (or starting with cells from their siblings), changing the cells in some way to give them activity and/or immunity against HIV, growing large numbers of the modified cells in the laboratory, then injecting them back into the patient. For example, the Stanford study will obtain dendritic cells from uninfected siblings, treat them with HIV proteins or peptides, then inject then into the patient -- which should cause the patient's immune system to generate HIV-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). Later, for persons with low T-helper counts, their relatives' dendritic cells, and relatives' CD4 or CD8 cells, will be used to generate the HIV-specific CTLs.
The University of Pennsylvania project will test a different treatment approach, called DNA vaccines. In this study, non- infectious HIV genes will be injected into muscle tissue of persons with HIV. This should stimulate an immune response against the virus.
Nava Sarver, Ph.D., coordinator of the SPIRAT program, described its goal as to "allow scientists to pursue strategies to restore or maintain functional immune systems in people infected with HIV or to attack HIV replication directly on the macromolecular and cellular levels rather than by drug intervention."
NIAID announced the SPIRAT recipients on September 1.
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