Genetic treatment closes door on HIV

Its always great to see advances in HIV Treatment!

 

It looks to be a promising treatment, but still not quite a cure...I still view the best route of defeating HIV is a vaccine for healthy individuals.

 

CCR5-Δ32 (or CCR5-D32 or CCR5 delta 32) is a genetic variant of CCR5.
CCR5-Δ32 is a deletion mutation of a gene that has a specific impact on the function of T cells. CCR5-Δ32 is widely dispersed throughout Northern Europe and in those of Northern European descent. It has been hypothesized that this allele was favored by natural selection during the Black Death. This coalescence date is contradicted by purported evidence of CCR5-Δ32 in Bronze Age samples, at levels comparable to the modern European population.Smallpox may be another candidate for the high level of the mutation in the European population.
The allele has a negative effect upon T cell function, but appears to protect against smallpox and HIV. Yersinia pestis was demonstrated in the laboratory not to associate with CCR5. Individuals with the Δ32 allele of CCR5 are healthy, suggesting that CCR5 is largely dispensable. However, CCR5 apparently plays a role in mediating resistance to West Nile virus infection in humans, as CCR5-Δ32 individuals have shown to be disproportionately at higher risk of West Nile virus in studies, indicating that not all of the functions of CCR5 may be compensated by other receptors.
While CCR5 has multiple variants in its coding region, the deletion of a 32-bp segment results in a nonfunctional receptor, thus preventing HIV R5 entry; two copies of this allele provide strong protection against HIV infection. This allele is found in 5-14% of Europeans but is rare in Africans and Asians. Multiple studies of HIV-infected persons have shown that presence of one copy of this allele delays progression to the condition of AIDS by about 2 years. CCR5-Δ32 decreases the number of CCR5 proteins on the outside of the CD4 cell, which can have a large effect on the HIV disease progression rates. It is possible that a person with the CCR5-Δ32 receptor allele will not be infected with HIV R5 strains. Several commercial testing companies offer tests for CCR5-Δ32.
In 2007, an AIDS patient who had also developed myeloid leukemia, was treated with chemotherapy to suppress the cancer. A bone marrow transplant containing stem cells from a matched donor was then used to restore the immune system. However transplant was performed from a donor with the CCR5-Δ32 mutation gene. After 600 days, the patient was healthy and had undetectable levels of HIV in the blood and in examined brain and rectal tissues. Before the transplant, low levels of HIV X4, which does not use the CCR5 receptor, were also detected. Following the transplant, however, this type of HIV was not detected either, further baffling doctors. However, this is consistent with the observation that cells expressing the CCR5-Δ32 variant protein lack both the CCR5 and CXCR4 receptors on their surfaces, thereby conferring resistance to a broad range of HIV variants including HIV X4. After three years, the patient has maintained the resistance to HIV and has been pronounced cured of the HIV infection.
Enrollment of HIV-positive patients in a clinical trial was started in 2009 in which the patients' cells were genetically modified to carry the CCR5-Δ32 trait and then reintroduced into the body as a potential HIV treatment.

 

A vaccine for HIV would be extremely difficult to develop. The HIV virus mutates very rapidly, which means any vaccine given would quickly be redundant. It's the same reason you have to get a new flu vaccine every year.

However a step in the right direction with this research. Genetic medicine is the way medicines are going at the moment, which is pretty cool.

 

With the vaccine thing, aren't people scared of getting sick with the Flu vaccine? Imagine how they would act when they're injecting them with the HIV virus...

 

Vaccines never come in the form of just injecting someone with what you are vaccinating against; all that would achieve is giving them the infection. 'Deactivated' specimens can be used to vaccinate, or a substitute that is very similar but otherwise harmless, both allowing the immune system to learn how to combat the infection without any chance of an infection actually occuring.

HIV does lead to ruining the immune system though, so it might work a little differently compared to other vaccines.

 

This looks promising, but I still am skeptical, many wind up failing and such, so I just can't get my hopes up.

 

Who knows... they may adapt this treatment to become a general kind of preventative vaccine, remove the catch before the virus gets hold of it