AIDS Vaccine Created at OHSU May Clear Virus From Body

KFVS12 News

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - An HIV vaccine created by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University may be able to completely wipe out the AIDS-causing virus from the body, the university announced Wednesday. 

The vaccine, under development at OHSU's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, is being tested by using a primate form of HIV, called SIV, which causes AIDS in monkeys. Researchers hope an HIV-form of the vaccine candidate will soon be able to be tested in humans. The journal Nature published the research results online Wednesday. 

Dr. Louis Picker, the lab's associate director, said HIV infection has only been cured in "a very small number of highly-publicized but unusual clinical cases." In those cases, people with HIV were treated with anti-viral medicines very early after the onset of infection or they received a stem cell transplant to combat cancer. "This latest research suggests that certain immune responses elicited by a new vaccine may also have the ability to completely remove HIV from the body," Picker said. 

The approach uses cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which is a common virus that doctors said is carried by a large percentage of the population. Pairing it with SIV had a unique effect, researchers found, and SIV-infected cells were sought out and destroyed. 

Researchers said they were able to teach the monkey's body to better prepare its defenses to combat SIV, and they're hoping their modified CMV will have a similar result in humans. "What we've shown is that not only does this vaccine control the infection, but it actually eliminates the virus from the body of the monkey," Picker said. 

Grants from several organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are funding OHSU's research.

Reposted From KFVS12

HIV deciphered, scientists hope to find its weakness

LONDON: Scientists have for the first time peeled open the virus that can lead to AIDS from its shell raising giving a priceless insight into how it can be stopped from infecting millions across the globe every year.

A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have announced that they have peeled open HIV's outer coating and discovered 4-million-atom structure inside the protein shell.

AIDS scientists optimistic of AIDS cure, for some

The experts have high hopes for a treatment that will be given to an AIDS patient at an early stage of infection.

Top AIDS scientists were optimistic of finding a cure for the disease that has claimed 30 million lives -- but said it might not work for all people.

The experts have high hopes for a treatment that will be given at an early stage of infection -- most likely a cocktail that includes an immunity booster and a virus killer.

But they said people with a long-running, untreated infection and a compromised immune system may never benefit from an envisioned "functional cure" -- which means a person retains traces of the virus but no symptoms.

"We have had some very interesting little lights at the end of the tunnel in individual studies," Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on the sidelines of a Paris conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the discovery of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"It is a difficult road, but a feasible road," he said.

Proof of vaccine feasibility lay with a Thai study dubbed RV144, which in 2009 demonstrated protection for 31 per cent of some 16,000 people given an experimental vaccine, said Fauci.

"I think we will likely have a (vaccine that works at) better than 31 per cent, but there's certainly the possibility that we won't have a 90 per cent," Fauci told reporters.

"And I think there is even a greater possibility that we won't have a pristine cure that would essentially cure everybody who is HIV infected.

"I think it's not only possible that that won't happen -- I think it is likely that that won't happen."

Fauci and other scientists point to the difficulties they have encountered to completely expunge the virus that destroys the immune system and exposes infected people to pneumonia, TB, and other opportunistic disease.

Antiretroviral drugs slow down virus reproduction, allowing people to live symptom-free lives and slowing transmission to others, but much of the virus hides away in "reservoir" cells only to reemerge and start spreading again once treatment stops.


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