A group of medical researchers in Maryland believe the answer for curing HIV\/AIDS may be gene therapy.<\/p>\n
American Gene Technologies (AGT), a Rockville-based medical research company, has\u00a0submitted a Investigational New Drug (IND) application\u00a0with the FDA to begin gene therapy trials that researchers believe could eliminate HIV in people already living with the virus.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The drug\u2014an HIV treatment program called AGT103-T\u2014is a single-dose, lentiviral vector-based gene therapy that AGT says could\u00a0remove infected cells from the body\u00a0and decrease or eliminate the need for lifelong antiretroviral treatment in HIV-positive patients.<\/p>\n
If approved, the company hopes to begin a Phase 1 clinical trial that will examine the safety of AGT103-T in humans.<\/p>\n
In a press statement, AGT chief science officer C. David Pauza, PhD, said the company\u2019s objective is \u201cto treat HIV disease with an innovative cell and gene therapy that reconstitutes immunity to HIV and will control virus growth in the absence of antiretroviral drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
AGT\u2019s approach differs from other medical researchers\u2019 attempts to cure HIV. As\u00a0NewNowNext<\/em>\u00a0reported earlier this year, researchers in Europe made headlines when\u00a0two separate HIV-positive patients\u00a0no longer had the virus after obtaining bone marrow transplants from donors with an HIV-resistant mutation to treat unrelated cancers.<\/p>\nThose patients marked the second and third time doctors were able to effectively \u201ccure\u201d patients living with HIV via bone marrow transplant in the history of modern medicine. However, HIV\/AIDS activists and medical professionals were\u00a0quick to raise concerns\u00a0about the feasibility of curing HIV with bone marrow transplants on a more widespread basis.<\/p>\n
Kenneth Freedberg, MD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital,\u00a0told\u00a0NewNowNext\u00a0in March\u00a0that the method \u201cis not a remotely plausible strategy for HIV treatment\u201d for the vast majority of patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bone marrow transplant is an extraordinarily toxic and life-threatening intervention, which you do if someone has an illness that\u2019s clearly going to be fatal,\u201d Freedberg explained. \u201cThere must be no other treatment options available. It puts people at massive risk for infections and toxicity complications.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the fight against HIV\/AIDS wages on, communities at risk of contracting the virus continue to take preventative measures against new infections\u2014including daily use of\u00a0Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a potentially life-saving HIV prevention drug that is\u00a0massively popular\u00a0among gay, bisexual, and queer men.<\/p>\n
In the United States, PrEP is pretty much exclusively available as Truvada, its brand-name version manufactured by Gilead Sciences with\u00a0a very high retail markup. That may change soon, though: Earlier this week, the government filed a lawsuit against Gilead alleging patent infringement on PrEP, which was patented by public health researchers at the Department of Health and Human Services years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[179,1008,2368,2226,462],"class_list":["post-2763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aids-hiv","tag-claims","tag-found","tag-gene-tech-company","tag-hiv-cure","tag-medical-research"],"yoast_head":"\n
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