While there have been five other known cases of people who have been cured of HIV - meaning they have been declared in long-term remission - his case is so far unique. He’s the only one who received stem cells from a donor who does not have a rare gene mutation - CCR5 - that blocks HIV from entering cells.
She’s the third person ever to be cured. Researchers announced that the new approach holds the potential for curing more people of racially diverse backgrounds.
A new HIV vaccine candidate has been trialled in humans and monkeys, with promising results.
Nearly 400 healthy, uninfected adults mounted an immune response against the vaccine and tolerated it well, according to the latest study. In monkeys, 67 percent were protected against the closely-related SHIV infection.
The International AIDS Society president has called on the United States to "stay engaged" in HIV research. US President Donald Trump's proposed budget outlined funding cuts for global health initiatives.
AIDS : Renowned Scientists Implicated in Falsified Medication Trafficking Between France and Africa
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
For World AIDS Day, a French institute, the IIDSRSI, announced the launch of an anti-HIV medication on the African market. However, the medication in question has not been proven to be effective. The institute is supported by renowned scientists such as Professors Jean Claude Chermann (France) and Mark Wainberg (Canada). This article exposes the underbelly of this trafficking.
Specialized proteins can protect monkeys against the virus for months.
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
A single infusion of antibodies can protect monkeys from infection with a virus that is similar to HIV for nearly six months.
The finding provides further evidence that antibodies — specialized proteins that the body produces to fight infections — could one day be used as a method to prevent people from becoming infected with HIV.
After stopping treatment 12 years ago, a French teenager born with HIV was still in remission, making it the longest-known case of a pediatric patient living healthfully without antiretroviral drugs. Scientists described the case Monday at the annual International AIDS Society meeting in Vancouver, Canada, saying the news may give credence to the impact of early treatment.
A newly identified recombinant variant of HIV progresses to AIDS much faster than other known versions of the virus, often before the patient knows they are infected.
But the risks associated with the procedure mean it is unlikely to be widely used in its current form.
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
A 53-year-old man in Germany has become at least the third person with HIV to be declared cleared of the virus after a procedure that replaced his bone marrow cells with HIV-resistant stem cells from a donor.
Vitamin and antiviral drugs appear to clear AIDS virus, but it could still be hiding out in tissue reservoirs
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
A 36-year-old man in Brazil has seemingly cleared an HIV infection—making him the proof of principle in humans of a novel drug strategy designed to flush the AIDS virus out of all of its reservoirs in the body. After receiving an especially aggressive combination of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and nicotinamide (vitamin B3), the man, who asks to be referred to as the São Paulo Patient to protect his privacy, went off all HIV treatment in March 2019 and has not had the virus return to his blood.
Suppressive combination antiretroviral therapy fails to eradicate HIV-1 latent reservoirs in poorly characterized cell compartments. Here, urethral macrophages, but not urethral T cells, are shown to contain integrated HIV-1 DNA and to be able to release infectious HIV-1 following reactivation with lipopolysaccharide.
The results of this study show that immunization of cows may provide an avenue to rapidly generate antibody prophylactics and therapeutics to address disease agents that have evolved to avoid human antibody responses.
French researchers have identified a marker that makes it possible to differentiate "dormant" HIV-infected cells from healthy cells. This discovery will make it possible to isolate and analyze reservoir cells which, by silently hosting the virus, are responsible for its persistence even among patients receiving antiviral treatment, whose viral load is undetectable. It offers new therapeutic strategies for targeting infected cells.
HIV research has come a long way since the disease was discovered in the 1980’s. Triple therapy was a major milestone, and now biotech and pharma have shifted their focuses to finding an HIV cure. We’ve scanned the biotech industry and catalogued promising developments in the field.
Martin Shkreli was taken into custody Thursday morning
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund manager and drug company CEO, became a lightning rod in September when he raised the cost of Dararim by 5,000 percent. Daraprim, the common name for the drug pyrimethamine, is the only medication for treatingtoxoplasmosis, an infection contracted from cat parasites that can cause birth defects. It is also used as a co-treatment for HIV infections, some cancers and malaria.
A law enforcement source confirmed that Shkreli was arrested by the FBI at his home in Manhattan Thursday on security fraud charges, CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports. He is being processed at FBI headquarters in New York and is expected to be arraigned later today in Federal Court in Brooklyn.
The female reproductive system may have a natural defense against HIV, which could protect women from developing the virus, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In their new study published in mBio, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that a specific type of vaginal bacteria may trap the infection before it has a chance to spread.
Scientists have discovered that HIV does not cause AIDS by the virus's direct effect on the host's immune cells, but rather through the cells' lethal influence on one another. In a new study, the researchers revealed that the HIV 'death pathway' (how 95 percent of cells die from the virus) is only initiated if the virus is passed from cell-to-cell, not if cells are infected by free-floating viral particles.
A team of biomedical engineers at Columbia University has developed a smartphone dongle costing just $34 that can conduct HIV tests with similar accuracy to ‘gold standard’ laboratory equipment costing over $18,000. The test, which also detects syphilis, takes just 15 minutes to run.
A Miss. baby born with HIV and hoped to have been cured by aggressive drugs started right after birth now shows signs of infection. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH says the nearly 4-year-old girl is responding well to renewed treatment. (July 10) Video provided by AP
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After 20 months after interrupting antiretroviral therapy, HIV was undetectable in the patient’s blood.
A man known as the “Geneva patient” has become the latest person in the world to be cured of HIV after a stem cell transplant for cancer treatment.
While there have been five other known cases of people who have been cured of HIV - meaning they have been declared in long-term remission - his case is so far unique. He’s the only one who received stem cells from a donor who does not have a rare gene mutation - CCR5 - that blocks HIV from entering cells.