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Israeli researchers offer glimmer of hope for HIV carriers
Research yields good first results, but scientific community says it's 'not a significant development'
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Two Israeli scientists believe they have reached a breakthrough in destroying cells infected with the HIV virus and have announced their plan to start clinical trials on human beings within three months, the Israeli Ynet site reported Sunday.
While HIV was first clinically observed in carriers in 1981, modern medicine still does not know what triggers the virus' awakening process or when it will duplicate itself to other cells.
Prof. Abraham Loyter and Prof. Assaf Friedler of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem believe to have found a method to kill the cell infected with the virus without harming the entire body, thereby curing the HIV carrier.
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Following successful research the Zyon Pharmaceutical company signed an exclusive agreement with the university to develop a medication.
Loyter and Friedler, developed peptides (short chains of amino acid monomers) which cause many copies of the HIV virus' DNA to enter the cell, instead of the usual one copy.
This process leads to an activation of the cell's self-destruction mechanisms, thereby killing the cell and preventing a spread of the virus in the carrier's body.
According to the Ynet report, initial tests on cultures of human cells infected with the HIV virus were promising: Within two weeks of treatment, there was no sign of the virus DNA or infected cells, and the virus was undetectable even two weeks after the end of the treatment.
Loyter and Friedler's findings were published in the AIDS Research and Therapy journal, but the scientific community has expressed their reservations, saying "it is not a significant development."
But Patrick Levy, 50, the first executive director of the Israel AIDS Task Force who has been an HIV carrier for 28 years now, is optimistic.
"There are always reports about breakthroughs, so I try not to expect too much so as not to be disappointed," he says. "This time it looks like a very interesting breakthrough. If it has reached the point of a clinical trial on human beings, it's definitely a dramatic development and real news."
'Major achievement'
Earlier this month, a Norwegian drug firm announced a similar advance in its quest for an HIV cure with a drug combination which seeks to force the virus out of its hiding place and kill it last week.
A trial with 17 HIV-positive patients yielded a “statistically signficant decrease” in the virus, biotech firm Bionor announced.
“This is a major achievement on the path to a functional cure for HIV,” Bionor spokesman Jorgen Fischer Ravn told AFP.
There is no cure for the disease AIDS, caused by HIV. but anti-retroviral treatments help people live longer, healthier lives by delaying and subduing symptoms.
In some who undergo treatment, however, the virus takes cover in cells and hides away, only to reemerge once therapy is stopped.
This latency has been one of the biggest hurdles in developing a cure.
“Waking up” the virus and then destroying it—the so-called “kick-and-kill” approach—is a promising strategy for ridding patients of HIV.
Bionor’s approach involves an anti-cancer drug called romidepsin to wake up the dormant HIV, and a vaccine called Vacc-4x to prime the body’s own immune T-cells to recognise and destroy the virus.
“After an activation of the virus, which would normally lead to detectable virus in the blood, Vacc-4x ensured killing of the virus-producing cells to maintain non-detectable or very low levels of virus in the blood in 15 out of 17 patients,” said Fischer Ravn.
No one has yet been cured of AIDS.
Thirty-nine million people have died of AIDS, according to UN estimates, and about 35 million are living with the immune system-destroying virus today, overwhelmingly in poor countries.
(staff with AFP)