A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
has successfully flushed latent HIV infection from hiding, with a drug
used to treat certain types of lymphoma. Tackling latent HIV in the
immune system is critical to finding a cure for AIDS.
The results were presented March 8 at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, Washington.
While current antiretroviral therapies can very effectively control
virus levels, they can never fully eliminate the virus from the cells
and tissues it has infected.
"Lifelong use of antiretroviral therapy is problematic for many
reasons, not least among them are drug resistance, side effects, and
cost," said David Margolis, MD, professor of medicine, microbiology and
immunology, and epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. "We need to employ better long-term strategies, including a
cure."
Margolis' new study is the first to demonstrate that the biological
mechanism that keeps HIV hidden and unreachable by current antiviral
therapies can be targeted and interrupted in humans, providing new hope
for a strategy to eradicate HIV completely.
In a clinical trial, six HIV-infected men who were medically stable
on anti-AIDS drugs, received vorinostat, an oncology drug. Recent
studies by Margolis and others have shown that vorinostat also attacks
the enzymes that keep HIV hiding in certain CD4+ T cells, specialized
immune system cells that the virus uses to replicate. Within hours of
receiving the vorinostat, all six patients had a significant increase in
HIV RNA in these cells, evidence that the virus was being forced out of
its hiding place.
"This proves for the first time that there are ways to specifically
treat viral latency, the first step towards curing HIV infection," said
Margolis, who led the study. "It shows that this class of drugs, HDAC
inhibitors, can attack persistent virus. Vorinostat may not be the magic
bullet, but this success shows us a new way to test drugs to target
latency, and suggests that we can build a path that may lead to a cure."
The research conducted is part of a UNC-led consortium, the
Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication (CARE), funded by the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The consortium is
administered by the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences
(NC TraCS) Institute at UNC, one of 60 medical research institutions in
the US working to improve biomedical research through the NIH Clinical
and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program.
Other UNC authors on the paper include Nanci Archin, PhD, Shailesh
Choudary, PhD, Joann Kuruc, MSN, and Joseph Eron, MD of the medical
school; Angela Kashuba, PharmD of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy; and
Michael Hudgens, PhD, of the Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of
Health, Merck & Co., and the James B. Pendleton Charitable Trust.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, via Newswise.
Courtesy: ScienceDaily
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