HIV/AIDS research
[1] Research published in 2014 concludes that the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone selectively impact HIV transmission.
Symptoms of acute HIV infection include fever, chills, rash, night sweats, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes.
Opportunistic infections, that a robust immune system could fight off, now are capable of causing severe symptoms and illnesses.
Such persons are of great interest to researchers, who feel that a study of their physiologies could provide a deeper understanding of the virus and disease.
Results of this trial give the first supporting evidence of any vaccine being effective in lowering the risk of contracting HIV.
[15] As of 2024, 7 people have been reported cured of AIDS by stem cell transplants, 5 of those from donors with two copies of the CCR5-delta-32 mutation which gives protection against HIV infection and these have been dubbed as the "Berlin" (2008), "London" (2020), "Duesseldorf" (2022), "New York" (2022) and "City of Hope" (2023) patients.
[citation needed] In 2019, the NIH and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced making $200 million available for broad-based, multi-prong scientific efforts focused on developing a global cure for AIDS as well as for sickle cell disease, with NIH Director Francis S. Collins saying, "We aim to go big or we go home.
"[25] In 2020, Tony Fauci's division at NIH, NIAID, issued its first solicitation exclusively focused on methods to cure HIV infection.
Excision BioTherapeutics is a biotechnology company with a first-in-human CRISPR-based one-time gene therapy to be evaluated in individuals with HIV.
[28][29] In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown,[30] a 40-year-old HIV-positive man, also known as "the Berlin Patient", was given a stem cell transplant as part of his treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
[32][33] After 20 months without antiretroviral drug treatment, it was reported that HIV levels in Brown's blood, bone marrow, and bowel were below the limit of detection.
[31] Although the researchers and some commentators have characterized this result as a cure, others suggest that the virus may remain hidden in tissues[34] such as the brain (which acts as a viral reservoir).
On March 7, 2013, the Washington University in St. Louis website published a report by Julia Evangelou Strait, in which it was reported that ongoing nanoparticle research showed that nanoparticles loaded with various compounds could be used to target infectious agents whilst leaving healthy cells unaffected.
[37] Dr Joshua Hood goes on to explain that beyond preventive measures in the form of a topical gel, he sees "potential for using nanoparticles with melittin as therapy for existing HIV infections, especially those that are drug-resistant.
Though this study does involve several early stage clinical trials that have demonstrated the safety and feasibility of this technique only for HIV-1, none have resulted in improvement of the disease state itself.
This study demonstrated the efficacy of a transplantation approach that ultimately allows for an enriched population of HSPCs expressing a single copy of a CCR5 miRNA.
[41] Complementing efforts to control viral replication, immunotherapies that may assist in the recovery of the immune system have been explored in past and ongoing trials, including IL-2 and IL-7.
A limited period of therapy combining anti-retrovirals with drugs targeting the latent reservoir may one day allow for total eradication of HIV infection.
This protein is common to all HIV variants as it is the attachment point for B lymphocytes and subsequent compromising of the immune system.
Brown attained the title of the "Berlin Patient" in the HIV research field and is the first man to have been cured of the virus.
As of April 2013, two primary approaches are being pursued in the search for a HIV cure: The first is gene therapy that aims to develop a HIV-resistant immune system for patients, and the second is being led by Danish scientists, who are conducting clinical trials to strip the HIV from human DNA and have it destroyed permanently by the immune system.
Two of the cases were publicized in a July 2013 CNN story that relayed the experience of two patients who had taken antiretroviral therapy for years before they developed lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes.
[47][48][49] Identifying pyroptosis may provide novel therapeutic opportunities targeting caspase-1, which controls the pyroptotic cell death pathway.
Specifically, these findings could open the door to an entirely new class of "anti-AIDS" therapies that act by targeting the host rather than the virus.
[51] In March 2016, researchers at Temple University, Philadelphia, reported that they have used genome editing to delete HIV from T cells.
