Scientists Just Got Closer To A One-Time Cure For HIV Than Ever Before
A non-profit medical organization called Caring Cross has presented early results from the first human trial of a one-time CAR-T cell therapy designed to functionally cure HIV, and two of the nine participants who received the treatment have maintained undetectable viral levels for an extended period after stopping their antiretroviral medication entirely, a result the research team describes as better than expected and unlike anything seen in previous approaches. The therapy works by extracting a patient's own T cells, genetically engineering them using Caring Cross's proprietary duoCAR technology so that they can both kill HIV-infected cells and protect healthy ones from future infection, and then reinfusing them as a living, self-renewing treatment. The dual function of killing and protecting turned out to be what the method's developer calls the missing link, the piece that earlier approaches were lacking. Results were presented at the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy Annual Meeting in Boston.
A functional cure for HIV would not necessarily eliminate every trace of the virus from the body but would suppress it to undetectable levels without the need for daily medication, a transformation that would change the daily reality for the approximately 37 million people living with HIV globally, who currently require lifelong antiretroviral therapy to keep the virus under control. Previous HIV cures have required stem cell transplants from donors with a rare genetic mutation and were available only to a small number of patients being treated for cancer at the same time. The CAR-T approach, by contrast, uses a patient's own cells and could theoretically be scaled and adapted for a much broader population. Caring Cross plans to launch a larger trial later this year and is working with partners in Brazil, India, and other countries to reduce manufacturing costs. The founder of Caring Cross said the results show this approach has the potential to become a lasting, potentially one-time treatment, and that the next generation of the therapy is already in development.
