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Meds, Mind, Body & Benefits => Research News & Studies => Topic started by: Ihavehope on February 10, 2007, 07:39:53 pm

Title: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ihavehope on February 10, 2007, 07:39:53 pm
So much talk about a cure in our lifetime but so far no virus has a cure. HIV is so potent that they hide in places meds don't reach. How likely is it that a cure is found?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: jupiter on February 11, 2007, 06:04:15 am
ABSOLUTLY YES!!

There will be so much prestige and financial reward for the person (s) team company that find this cure.  Its just a matter of time.  were learning more all the time.  and now we know more than ever before.

At this moment we must focus on being well and optimistic and know that there are doctors and scientists working on this!!

Hugs
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ihavehope on February 11, 2007, 11:37:12 am
I've asked 3 medical professionals this question and 2 of them avoided answering me the questions and said " there are very good treatments available now and better one's will come out soon, we now even have Atripla, once a day pill, something that was unimanigable in the 80's"

the Optimistic doctor told me "Absolutely, there are doctors/researchers/scientist working around the clock all over the world trying to find a cure. Hopefully it will come in our life-time but a cure is almost certain"
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Sky on February 11, 2007, 10:17:26 pm
As soon as a democrat as prez things will move faster than a hamster in a wheel in my opinion.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on February 11, 2007, 11:02:41 pm
I'm skeptical.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Optimistic on February 11, 2007, 11:58:29 pm
According Bill Gates, Yes.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/10/gates-interview.html (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/10/gates-interview.html)

Justin
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bobino on February 12, 2007, 02:29:24 am

Re:  Bill Gates.  Just note that Gates says we will likely have a vaccine in his lifetime.  Remember, everyone, a vaccine is not a cure. 

Sorry to rain on the parade, but let's keep our terminology straight.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: blondbeauty on February 12, 2007, 08:31:25 am
No. I don´t think there will ever be a cure. But I think we will have resistance proof meds with little side effects and ways to measure our viral loads at home.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: NewYorkKat on February 12, 2007, 12:04:25 pm
I don;t think they will be a cure but a vaccine yes! It might be able to home monitor our blood like diabetes. Meds that are once a day with no side effects. Just good take care of yourself!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jake72 on February 12, 2007, 05:45:52 pm
I'm not sure if there will be an absolute cure (absolutely no HIV anywhere in the body), but I'd like to think that there'll be a therapeutic vaccine that will turn HIV into an inactive condition, much like chicken pox or mononucleosis (once you get it, the virus is always in your body, but it's usually not doing anything because it's under control).  This would mean that HIV would be controlled without the need for daily medications and  frequent blood tests.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on February 12, 2007, 09:14:26 pm
YES a cure or completely halting virus with meds with little or no side effects or gene therapy or vaccines or a combination.

YES because of these BREAKTHROUGH SCIENCE DISCOVERIES... esp. first two and 50 others that are posted on line and soon to be announced

YES within 5 to 10 years

YES because a top hiv dr. at cedars said so

YES because i need hope and am afraid of current meds side effects

YES because each of these is a giant breakthru, each in last year or so, and all the 25 yrs of research and tens of billions of research and now every country

YES because there are 1 billion smart indians and chinease and some are working on it if the euros and usa drs. dont get their first

YES because it is completely suppressed in most primates and they recently know why trim5alpha

yes because gene therapy is already successful according to one trial person in my support group

yes because they now understand only since august 2006 about why cd8 cells stop fighting it and they have some meds already approved for trials to help the cd8s work harder

yes because too many good people are suffering

yes because the powerful fear for thier grandchildren

yes because scientists are good hard working and on the side of truth, the universe, and knowledge

yes because of all these breakthrus recently.........

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8792.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7475.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7701.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7836.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8208.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8475.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8415.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8412.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8773.0
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: jupiter on February 13, 2007, 05:11:06 am
YES a cure or completely halting virus with meds with little or no side effects or gene therapy or vaccines or a combination.

YES because of these BREAKTHROUGH SCIENCE DISCOVERIES... esp. first two and 50 others that are posted on line and soon to be announced

YES within 5 to 10 years

YES because a top hiv dr. at cedars said so

YES because i need hope and am afraid of current meds side effects

YES because each of these is a giant breakthru, each in last year or so, and all the 25 yrs of research and tens of billions of research and now every country

YES because there are 1 billion smart indians and chinease and some are working on it if the euros and usa drs. dont get their first

YES because it is completely suppressed in most primates and they recently know why trim5alpha

yes because gene therapy is already successful according to one trial person in my support group

yes because they now understand only since august 2006 about why cd8 cells stop fighting it and they have some meds already approved for trials to help the cd8s work harder

yes because too many good people are suffering

yes because the powerful fear for thier grandchildren

yes because scientists are good hard working and on the side of truth, the universe, and knowledge

yes because of all these breakthrus recently.........


WOW!!
THANK YOU Bimazek!
Good stuff.  Im so excited!! we are deffinatly on the way. Thanks for your positivity!!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Optimistic on February 13, 2007, 11:08:15 am
YES a cure or completely halting virus with meds with little or no side effects or gene therapy or vaccines or a combination.

YES because of these BREAKTHROUGH SCIENCE DISCOVERIES... esp. first two and 50 others that are posted on line and soon to be announced

YES within 5 to 10 years

YES because a top hiv dr. at cedars said so

YES because i need hope and am afraid of current meds side effects

YES because each of these is a giant breakthru, each in last year or so, and all the 25 yrs of research and tens of billions of research and now every country

YES because there are 1 billion smart indians and chinease and some are working on it if the euros and usa drs. dont get their first

YES because it is completely suppressed in most primates and they recently know why trim5alpha

yes because gene therapy is already successful according to one trial person in my support group

yes because they now understand only since august 2006 about why cd8 cells stop fighting it and they have some meds already approved for trials to help the cd8s work harder

yes because too many good people are suffering

yes because the powerful fear for thier grandchildren

yes because scientists are good hard working and on the side of truth, the universe, and knowledge

yes because of all these breakthrus recently.........

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8792.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7475.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7701.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7836.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8208.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8475.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8415.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8412.0

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8773.0

Thanks for the positive energy.  You rock Bizmazek.

Justin
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: ga1964 on February 13, 2007, 03:22:24 pm
I just tested positive Dec. 2006 and as much as I would like to believe that there will be a cure someday, I don't see it happening.  I'm not trying to burst anyones bubble of hope, but if you look at the history of this and other "MANAGEABLE" diseases you will see that it is not in the best interest for the pharmaceutical companies or big government to find a cure.  It is more profitable for all to find something to maintain someones health and keep them on it.  I'm taking Atripla which runs about $1450.00 a month, multiply that times the number of people infected and ask yourself, "Are the pharmaceutical companies willing to give up that much profit?", we are talking BILLIONS of dollars here.  Look how long diabetes has been a "MANAGEABLE" disease, but to this day no cure has been found.  As for our government, look back at the history of how this disease was handled.  As long as it was killing minorities and gay people, our government did not give a damn.  It was only when the disease went "mainstream", attacking "normal" straight people, that our government decided that it was time to start looking for a "cure". 

Maybe it's just me and I still have a lot of issues to deal with finding out my status so recently, but I don't have much faith in our government or the corporations that "run" it that anyone other than those infected truly want to find a cure.  There is too much money to be lost on finding a cure. 

I truly hope I am wrong and that a cure will be found before it's too late for me, but I have come to terms that I will die from AIDS.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ihavehope on February 13, 2007, 03:48:27 pm
I tend to agree with you GA1964. BUT

You also have to keep in mind that this is a SEXUALLY infectious disease there and it is growing amongst hetereosexual in a fast pace. Every 5 seconds someone in this world is getting infected with HIV in the world. The virus is mutating and they are realizing HAART is not as effective as it once was. There is an incentive to stop the spread of AIDS because it no longer discriminates or considered "gay disease".  Companies also make HUGE amounts of money on the stock, if the company finds a cure or a better therapy than HAART they will be making lots of money from stock and prestige.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Optimistic on February 13, 2007, 03:55:08 pm
I just tested positive Dec. 2006 and as much as I would like to believe that there will be a cure someday, I don't see it happening.  I'm not trying to burst anyones bubble of hope, but if you look at the history of this and other "MANAGEABLE" diseases you will see that it is not in the best interest for the pharmaceutical companies or big government to find a cure.  It is more profitable for all to find something to maintain someones health and keep them on it.  I'm taking Atripla which runs about $1450.00 a month, multiply that times the number of people infected and ask yourself, "Are the pharmaceutical companies willing to give up that much profit?", we are talking BILLIONS of dollars here.  Look how long diabetes has been a "MANAGEABLE" disease, but to this day no cure has been found.  As for our government, look back at the history of how this disease was handled.  As long as it was killing minorities and gay people, our government did not give a damn.  It was only when the disease went "mainstream", attacking "normal" straight people, that our government decided that it was time to start looking for a "cure". 

Maybe it's just me and I still have a lot of issues to deal with finding out my status so recently, but I don't have much faith in our government or the corporations that "run" it that anyone other than those infected truly want to find a cure.  There is too much money to be lost on finding a cure. 

I truly hope I am wrong and that a cure will be found before it's too late for me, but I have come to terms that I will die from AIDS.

You may be right...it's not in the best interest of big pharmaceutical companies and our government to come up with a cure at this very moment.... but it is certainly an interest to our government if the elected officials are more liberal.  

What about other countries other than the US?? If not the US, other countries will find a cure one way or another.  If the US claims they are as great as they are, they would not want to lose the race to find a cure. Think about it this way, China is viewed by many as a rising power....and if they could add an HIV cure or a cure for diabetes to their resume, it would be a slap in the face for the US.  

Also, what about the small pharmaceutical companies?? If one of the small pharmaceutical companies come up with a cure, their profit would sky rocket exponentially.

Don't forget about researches around the Universities, not just the ones in the US, but all the Universities worldwide are all conducting research to find a cure for HIV, Diabetes, etc.

We also have people like Bill Gates funding HIV research. It seems to me he is determined to come up with some sort of vaccine to halt the disease.  He has no interests in the Pharmaceutical business.  

Somehow, we will find a cure one way or another in my opinion.....

Justin  
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on February 13, 2007, 08:47:37 pm

the cure and new treatments has very little to do with big pharmaceutical companies and our government, it has nothing to do with anyone trying to stop anything, perhaps there could be more money for research but there has been billions for decades, they have discovered so much, many studies are being done, every week new breakthrus

it has to do with millions of scientists worldwide who are brilliant and want to win the nobel prize

in san diego alone there are 500 small tiny biotech companies that have nothing to do with big pharmaceutical companies

these small companies and scientists and bizmen in them make many huge discoveries
and they are all competing with each other

the body is complex

the hiv virus has been studied and the epidemic and gays huge activism, marches in 80s 90s and protest have forced giant changes at fda and drug trials etc

there is no giant govt org. trying to stop thousands of individual scientists in thier labs all over world from coming up with cure, they are so so close in so many areas

i have read articles for 9 months and the human genenom which only just got read and understood is making huge discoveries on how hiv works and how to treat

yes there is a cure or easier treatment coming in future

read any of these google searches, read my posts links above

trim5-alpha

gene therapy

cd8 new meds related to pd-1 anti-pd-1 and effect on hiv

There are a multitude of tools to apply to this goal, including small interfering RNA, iRNA, passive cellular immune augmentation, therapeutic vaccination, stem cell biology, cellular activation with combinations of more-selective ligands – as well as combinations of these approaches


http://www.virxsys.com/pages/human-therapies/first-clinical-application/how-vrx496-works.php
            Gene Therapy Shows Promise Against HIV
Gene-base therapy may be effective against HIV, U.S. researchers report.
An investigational gene-based immunotherapy called VRX496 suggests it can fight the virus, according to a phase I, open-label, non-randomized clinical trial conducted at the University of Pennsylvania
"This is an important milestone in the development of what we believe will be the next-generation of HIV therapy," reports Riku Rautsola, Ph.D., president and CEO of VIRxSYS

if you read my links in post above you will see that they are close


Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: GM1987 on February 14, 2007, 01:41:57 am
I bet they already have it...
My father is a Neuro-scientist and they're always researching/finding new things. The main point is - every day brings something new.

I doubt someone of high intellect that knows they can pursue this matter is not doing anything. No one can stop them and I don't see a reason why anyone would stop. There are big rewards...
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: med forum on February 14, 2007, 09:04:22 am
I think there will be a cure some day...when?....time will only tell

This article appeared yesterday I believe about Jesse Jackson urging pharmaceutical companies to find a cure:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16684727.htm

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: hussy_24 on February 14, 2007, 01:04:58 pm
i voted for a cure in the next 5 or so years, but when i think of a cure what i really think of is either a therapeutic vaccine with less reliance on daily meds or alternatively meds with few/no side effects so it would just be like taking a vitamin tablet everyday lol, i might still be infectious but that would be good enough for me. 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mjmel on February 14, 2007, 01:05:05 pm
A cure? Possible. A vaccine within the next 20 years is more probable. I also believe whatever is developed will have a hefty price tag.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: dingowarrior on February 14, 2007, 05:42:31 pm

 
ga1964,
 i know and truly understand how much your hurting..we all here have been there and many of us still are learning to deal with this diagnoses. But, my Infectious Disease doctor who is very much respected and known to be one of the top in his field, told me that i'd probably die of heart disease or diabiates before surcoming to hiv/aids.
so,as long as you take and stick to your meds regimen, DONT MISS A DOSE. you can live a normal life span.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on February 14, 2007, 08:05:46 pm
I voted for a cure in the next 5 years, but I think that's being pretty optimistic. The main barrier at the moment to eradicating HIV from the body is the persistence of viral reservoirs in parts of the body that HIV meds cannot reach, and the fact that the virus goes dormant inside immune cells that persist for decades.

I think there's some interesting work being done, but frankly, a cure is very much a peripheral concern for people in medicine. I think that the urgency to develop a cure has dropped now that HIV has largely been converted into a chronic condition. I worry that when they have a vaccine to protect negative people that urgency will disappear entirely. They'll let the 40 million or so African who have it die out and those of us in the developed world continue to feed Big Pharma's pockets with our expensive life-long meds.

If you look at where the research money is going, it's going into prevention - microbicides and preventative vaccines. And also better drugs for those of us with HIV. The American Foundation for AIDS research (amFAR) allocated only $1.5 million in July 2006 to studies looking at the eradication of HIV from the body:

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/2D810D00-BB98-4892-A263-2D97216624E7.asp

This is a one-off. These studies were termed "bold" by one of the grantees, and made front page news on AIDSMAP. Not enough. For me, pessimism isn't really an option. I was 26 when I was infected and according to a recent Danish study can expect to live about another 40 years on meds - so I'm in it for the long haul, like I hope everybody on here. Seeing a cure sooner rather than later is going to make a big difference to my quality of life in the long run. I'm increasingly thinking that HIVers are going to have to fund this stuff themselves. We're living longer, and are able to work: why is there no DEDICATED charity for us to contribute to that funnels funding to researchers interested in pursuing eradication? Researchers go where the money is, and there are enough of us - if every HIV+ person in the states gave $10 a year, there's $10,000,000. Add in Western Europe and there's $17,500,000 a year. More than big pharma is spending. Personally, if there was such a charity, I'd donate 10% of my income to it until it was over.

I've looked on the net, and there's nothing like this. If there's anybody in the UK who's good with websites/charity law/accounting and wants to set this up with me, PM me. If there's anybody in the States who wants to set up an office over there in co-ordination this would be such a cool thing to do.

Hell, I've gotten myself off my ass only to find a bug up it  :D
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ihavehope on February 14, 2007, 08:35:19 pm
Finding a cure to HIV/AIDS doesn't have to do with funding or research but they just simply can't find methods for it to stop evolving at such a fast pace without medication. As long as they find alternatives to HAART such as therapeutic vaccines and less toxic drugs that don't have to be taking every single day we will have a better quality of life. Living on HAART for the rest of our lives is not having a high quality of life because in the long run these drugs will kill us. We need to have a therapy that is less toxic to our bodies because living longer years but having to live with the consequences of HAART seems pretty awful to me.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: HIVworker on February 14, 2007, 09:30:44 pm
Sorry to pop anyone's balloon here, but I know of three pharmaceutical companies working on a cure. So quit with the back-of-the-envelope nonsense about them not wanting to do it.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on February 14, 2007, 09:36:59 pm
Really?! I didn't know that. Which 3? Where can I read more?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on February 15, 2007, 12:50:14 am
Other exciting new classes of medicines currently in human clinical trials and preclinical trials for HIV include the following: 

16 new integrase iinhibitors,
44 entry inbibitors,
new classes including
 CCR5 gp120,
gp41 blockers
scsr4 blockers,
8 new maturation inhibitors,
19 new non nukes,
18 new  nukes,
8 new protease inhibitors, and
the following completely new classes of meds;
alpha intigrins,
regulatory protein inhibitors,
CDK inhibitors,
rev inhibitors,
tat inhibitor,
CDK9 inhibitor,
ATM kinase inhibitor,
glucocorticoid antoagonist,
nuclear location viral matrix blockers,
erg1 gene activators,
nicotinic acetylcholine receptor blockers,
p38 inhibitor,
capsid inhibitor,
rev-tat inhibitor. 

All of these attack the virus at different points in its lifecycle and any one of these could be the next breakthrough treatment.   Twenty years of scientific work and billions of dollars are paying off in the HIV treatment area bringing hope to sufferers.

My personal favorite is the ATM inhibitor, it also stops you from using the ATM, LOL

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: manchesteruk on February 16, 2007, 04:47:19 pm
I think it depends how you would define a cure really.  If you mean a complete eradication of the virus from the body with the person then becoming HIV- I think you are talking a loooooong long time away if ever.  If you mean a theraputic vaccine which meant the body could control the virus itself without the need for any medication then i'd like to think that could be reachable in the next 10-15 years.  It all depends on how the investment into research develops.  There is still so much we don't know about the virus yet.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Cheo63 on February 17, 2007, 03:29:55 am
I agree with Matt Mee. 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: blondbeauty on February 17, 2007, 10:26:19 am
Please read this link about the therapeutic vaccine. I was going to apply for the therapeutic vaccine research in Barcelona. I prefer to be on meds forever. What I really want is resistance proof med with little side effects.
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/49B94284-E782-4A6D-A503-F729E12C4067.asp
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on February 18, 2007, 11:58:04 am
I don't think there can be such a thing as a "resistance proof med". Any drug with activity against HIV is going to force the virus to mutate in a certain direction to escape the control of that drug. It's just natural selection. And HIV is very mutable.

More realistically I hope to see 1st, 2nd, 3rd... etc, line therapies that are easy to take, and have a low side-effect profile.

It would be great to see a therapeutic vaccine, but I read in an article that even a highly effective therapeutic vaccine would only delay the start to medications by 3 years.

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/49B94284-E782-4A6D-A503-F729E12C4067.asp

I think what we really need is a cure. My hope is on radioimmunotherapy and valproic acid (even having looked at the recent negative article). I hope that we will be able to treat HIV like we do some forms of lymphoma, and aim for cure. I think 2008 will be a crunch year - with vaccine trial results, another valproic acid study finishing (the follow-up to the Margolis study in 2005) and hopefully some human trials of radioimmunotherapy.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: FiercenBed on February 18, 2007, 01:28:00 pm
i just got back from being interviewed for virixus. excluded cause i had ks in the past<i just cant get a break> i got a detail break down of the program. by no means is it a cure. 1st thing they tell ya when ya get there. but it is promising as a therepy.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jake72 on February 18, 2007, 06:52:21 pm
It would be great to see a therapeutic vaccine, but I read in an article that even a highly effective therapeutic vaccine would only delay the start to medications by 3 years.

Maybe?  Maybe not?  We don't know.  This reminds me of the late 1990s, when the gloom-and-doom predictors were saying that each HAART combo, even when complied with perfectly, would only be effective for 2-3 years before inevitable drug resistance, and that we'd all be failing entire classes of meds before long.   Fortunately, a number of people who have been on their combos for much longer than 2-3 years (sometimes 10 years now!) have disproved that 'inevitable resistance' theory.
So perhaps when a therapeutic vaccine becomes available, it'll be more durable and more effective than these naysayers believe.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on February 18, 2007, 07:34:33 pm
Maybe. But remember there were also people in the late 90s, like David Ho, who believed that HAART therapies would eradicate HIV over time. Now we know better. I think optimism is more dangerous than pessimism, because some poor bastard will always have to live the worst case scenario.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: pagnoco on February 25, 2007, 12:00:34 pm
DO YOU KNOW AVIP?

aids vaccine integrated project


their hiv therapeutic vaccine trial in southafrica in phase 2 is promising so much..
 they made a vaccine including  2 european vaccine      anti tat vaccine ( ensoli barbare .. italy) and
 DNA vaccine  from karolinska  university hospitale  ( britta wahren .. sweden).
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: egello on February 26, 2007, 07:27:49 pm


We also have people like Bill Gates funding HIV research. It seems to me he is determined to come up with some sort of vaccine to halt the disease.  He has no interests in the Pharmaceutical business.  Justin  

Bill Gates and Pharmaceutical biz? PLEASE,,, don't you guys konw he has millions invested in their stock?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: egello on February 26, 2007, 07:30:29 pm
i am also skeptical...

as the dissidents call it, "the aids industry" is BIG and encompasses large large section of our society. Basically, it feeds lots and lots of people, not to mention the pharm companies making what 30 billion profit per month!, 30 BILLION!!!!! Do you guys really think any one cure could bring that kind of money?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Optimistic on February 26, 2007, 07:42:49 pm
Bill Gates and Pharmaceutical biz? PLEASE,,, don't you guys konw he has millions invested in their stock?

Bill Gates is not an idiot...why would you not invest in the pharmaceutical companies, he could make $$ off of them....It's one thing to make more money, it's another thing to find a cure. ....but at the same time, he has the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation (non-profit) geared towards health and research for cures.  He also donates a lot of $$ to various research institutions that are not pharmaceutical related.  What about the recent donation to the new research initiative in Canada?

Justin
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: egello on February 26, 2007, 08:54:02 pm
oh, its not that i do not dislike what he is doing,, ist just that i was responding to the statement that "he has no interest in the pharm industry" which he obviously does...

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: blondbeauty on February 27, 2007, 12:20:17 pm
Pharma Industry is also responsible for meds for cancer and a vaccine for HPV against cervical cancer has been developed. So I don´t think the industry is against finding a cure. In fact all the meds we have today are thanks to Big Pharma.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mahrena on February 28, 2007, 01:41:04 am
They must tell you that vrx496 it is not yet a cure.
Try to immagine what happen if they tell you that.. YES IT IS A CURE.
Milion people is waiting for the magic word " CURE".
Let them keep going on... cross the fingers..
by

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 01, 2007, 04:30:10 am
YES science is getting very close on many many fronts of research... toward a cure or vaccine or great treatments

THIS IS AN AMAZING ARTICLE AND HAS DOZENS OF NEW THERAPIES AND TREATMENTS AND VACCINES THAT ARE IN THE WORKS...  WORTH READING IF YOU WANT TO HOPE AND RECENTLY WRITTEN 2005
this has some info on gene therapy
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:mIurCyhlLnIJ:www.aethlonmedical.com/pdfs/IndustryReport.pdf+Johnson+Tibotec+hiv+gene&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

here is selected parts...

Immune-based therapy will most likely play a major role in fighting HIV in the future. The immune
modulators are designed to help the efforts of one or more of the “arms” of the immune system:
antibodies; natural killer cells; killer T cells; and helper T cells. In addition, the immune modulators
may also prove effective at flushing out latent virus that may remain hidden in many cells and
lymphoid tissues of the body (and virtually undetected in the blood). This reservoir of latent cells is
believed to be one of the major barriers to completely eliminating HIV from a person’s body.
Companies that are currently pursuing various immune therapy strategies include many well-
known drug companies including Chiron Corporation (NASDAQ: CHIR); Bayer Corporation
(NYSE: BAY); and GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK).


The goal of developing an HIV vaccine is an area of great interest to scientists and drug
manufacturers alike. Although progress toward a vaccine has been a slow process with numerous
failures in the clinc, in the past few years remarkable strides have been made toward a vaccine for
HIV. In the twelve months after June 2003 thirteen vaccine candidates moved into Phase I trials.
That’s the highest number of Phase I trials initiated in any single year since the search for a
vaccine began. A major reason for the increased number of vaccine candidates and the progression
of these candidates is the development of international organizations in support of finding an AIDS
vaccine. Many vaccines are currently being tested utilizing recombinant viral vectors, DNA vaccines
and combinations of peptides and lipids to deliver the vaccine. Some researchers anticipate that in
developing countries between the years 2005 and 2010 some 44,000 people will participate in
approximately five Phase II/B and Phase III trials of AIDS vaccines spanning fifteen countries and
some 52,000 will participate in approximately ten Phase II/B and Phase III Non-vaccine HIV
prevention trials, including microbicide trials spanning twelve countries.

Many other novel approaches to attacking HIV are currently in development. These include
integrase inhibitors which prevent the virus from integrating itself into the genetic code of an
infected cell (Merck Pharmaceutical, NYSE: MRK); maturation inhibitors which prevent the virus
from maturing, rendering it unable to infect new cells (Panacos Pharmaceuticals); zinc finger
inhibitors which attack HIV’s inner core (Hubriphar); and devices such as Aethlon Medical’s
(OTC: AEMD) Hemopurifier™ which may offer exciting adjunct solutions to traditional anti-viral
therapy.
These more novel approaches appear to have a lot of potential; however, currently
scientific data on these mechanisms is often minimal and require more data to determine their long
term safety and efficacy.
Finally, the worldwide demand and competition for an effective preventative HIV vaccine is intense.
Currently many health organizations as well as drug manufacturers are attempting to use
combinations of vaccine agents to limit the spread of HIV whether it be from person to person or
the prevention of further infection within a patient’s body. Many new vaccine strategies, preventive
and/or therapeutic, that result in production of both anti-HIV antibodies and cytotoxic T-cells
(CTLs), are now being pursued. ALVAC vCP1521 by Aventis Pasteur (NYSE: SNY) is a
promising vaccine that is delivered in a canarypox virus vector. AIDSVAX B/E by VaxGen Inc.
(OTC:VXGN.PK), which is a new formulation of a previously failed vaccine, uses a regulatory HIV
protein as its delivery mechanism. Both AIDSVAX B/E and ALVAC vCP1521 are currently in Phase III
studies. AIDSVAX may also serve as an effective booster to other vaccines currently in
development.


N
EW
D
IRECTIONS IN
T
REATMENT
With drug resistance undermining the effectiveness of available antiretroviral drugs, AIDS clinicians
are looking toward therapies to expand treatment options and to strengthen the weakening immune
response associated with AIDS. These alternative methods of attacking HIV include: Entry
Inhibitors, which work by preventing HIV from attaching to and entering host cells; and immune-
based therapies as a means of correcting immune deficiencies and strengthening the effects of drug
therapy.
Many physicians hope this area can be used as adjunctive therapy combined with existing HAART
(Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy) to reduce side effects, enhance the efficacy of existing
treatments and delay the progression of the HIV virus. Many of these drugs are still in development
and represent a new direction for physicians and patients alike to attack HIV’s ability to attach to
the human cell and further along in the infection to prevent the destruction of the immune system.
Despite all of the developments and advancements in the field of antiretroviral therapy including
fighting transcription and fusion prevention there are still many problems that exist. Viral reservoirs
(brain, spinal fluid), development of drug resistance and the toxic effects seen from many
contemporary drugs all threaten the current antiretroviral regimens. A large majority of HIV-
patients are infected with viruses that are currently resistant to one or more classes of antiretroviral
agents. Through these concerns there has a grown a desire to find more novel approaches to
fighting HIV.
7.1 HIV E
NTRY
I
NHIBITORS
Some antiviral treatments attempt to inhibit viral attachment and thus prevent HIV from entering
the human cell. Certain parts of the HIV virus attach to certain areas on the human cell. Scientists
hope that by targeting these particular sites on both the human cell and the HIV virus they will be
able to prevent infection. Most entry inhibitors must be taken by injection because digestive acids
will break them down. Many of the pipeline drugs in this category attack the CCR5 receptor. The
CCR5 receptor helps direct immune cells to damaged or diseased areas of the body. This is how HIV
enters and infects T cells. There is a small percentage approximately 10 percent of people of
European decent that have a naturally occurring defect in their CCR5 receptor. In patients with this
defect HIV is unable to progress at the same rate as in someone without this genetic defect. These
products are known as CCR5 receptor antagonists.



I
MMUNE
-B
ASED
T
HERAPIES AND
O
THER
A
DJUNCT
A
PPROACHES
The immune system plays an important role in two important aspects of the HIV infection:
determining the baseline concentration of virus in the body and delaying disease progression.
Immune modulators are designed to help the efforts of one or more of the so-called armies of the
immune system: antibodies; natural killer cells; killer T-cells (also known as “cytotoxic T-cells”,
“CD8 cells”, or “CTLs”); and helper T-cells (also called “CD4 cells”). However, since latent virus
remains present in many cells and lymphoid tissues of the body (and virtually undetected in the
blood), these cells can persist for a long time, and virus lurking within them can rekindle active HIV
infection. When and if these cells become active, they can begin producing viruses. This reservoir
of resting cells is believed to be one of the major barriers to completely eliminating HIV from a
person’s body. It is very likely that the next generation of effective treatments will involve
converting this latent virus into active cells, so that it can be “flushed out” and confronted. That is,
once activated, these cells would be subjected to the immune system, immune-based therapies,
antiviral drugs and other HIV treatments.
I
MMUNE
-B
ASED
T
HERAPIES IN
D
EVELOPMENT
Proleukin® (interleukin-2, IL-2) – Chiron Corporation (NasdaqNM: CHIR)
Proleukin® is a recombinant form of interleukin-2 (IL-2), a naturally occurring chemical called a
cytokine, produced by certain cells of the immune system. Cytokines are your body’s own chemical
messengers that can be manipulated to increase the immune response to HIV. Each cytokine can
carry a different message telling your body how to deal with cells. T-helper cells, a type of white
blood cell, produce the protein IL-2 when they are stimulated by an infection. IL-2 is known as an
immune modulator and serves as a catalyst by multiplying and maturing infection-fighting cells.
Interleukin-2 is approved by the FDA to fight cancer but is not yet approved for HIV disease. IL-2
works by increasing the number of CD4+ cells through stimulation of the immune system. IL-2 does
not recover lost types of T-cells but is able to make copies of existing ones. IL-2 shows promise in
increasing T-cells counts especially when it is taken either in intravenous infusion form or as a
twice-daily subcutaneous injection every day for 5 days, once every 8 weeks. As the T-count
increases the cycles may occur less frequently. IL-2 must be taken in conjunction with other
antiviral drugs. The most prevalent side effect is capillary leak syndrome which causes weight gain,
swelling, low blood pressure, and other problems. IL-2 may also cause mood changes such as
irritability and depression. At lower doses IL-2 may reduce the number of neutrophils, a type of
infection-fighting cell, and may affect the thyroid. There appears to be no major side effects of IL-
2, and it will soon enter in Phase III trials. Proleukin® may also be effective at decreasing or
eliminating hidden pools of the virus. Currently companies such as Amgen Inc. (NasdaqNM:
AMGN) (IL-15), Biotech Inflection Point (IL-7), and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.
(NasdaqNM: REGN) (IL-4, IL-13 trap) are developing other methods for using cytokines to help
fight HIV infection most of which are in Pre-clinical to Phase I studies.
52
There are multiple immune-based therapies that are currently in production and development:

Bay 50-4798 (interleukin-2) by Bayer Corporation (NYSE: BAY) is in Phase I/II trials. It
consists of a recombinant form of IL-2. However, Bay 50-4798 does not affect other immune
cells like IL-2 does which may reduce the risk of side effects. Bay 50-4798 may have to be
injected twice a day.
53

Multikine® by Cel-Sci Corporation (AMEX: CVM) is currently in Phase I/II human trials for
the treatment of cancer; Multikine® is a combination of several different cytokines. These
cytokines include interleukins, interferons, chemokines and colony-stimulating factors.
Multikine® appears to be non-toxic and is able to boost patient’s immune systems. Cel-Sci
hopes to develop Multikine® for adjuvant treatment in HIV infected individuals.
54

Ampligen® by Hemispherx Biopharma (AMEX: HEB), in Phase II trials, is a synthetic RNA
molecule that is able to stimulate the immune system by encouraging it to produce interferon
52
Chiron Corporation company website: www.chiron.com
53
Bayer Corporation company website: www.bayer.com
54
Cel-Sci Corporation company website: www.cel-sci.com
Page 33
32
which activates a cell defenses against viruses. It has minimal side effects including flu-like
symptoms, chest tightness, transient neutropenia and malaise. Ampligen® is available as oral
tablets known as Oragens. Oragens are currently in pre-clinical studies.
55

Immunitin™ (HE2000) by Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals (NasdaqNM: HEPH) targets and
attempts to strengthen the “humoral” immune response which is responsible for producing
antibodies and therefore fighting HIV infection. This may help reestablish immune system
balance when it is in disrepair. Immunitin™ has shown activity against malaria and tuberculosis
as well. HE2000 is currently in Phase I/II trials.
56

MDX010 by Medarex Inc. (NasdaqNM: MEDX) is a fully human antibody that fights the
CTLA receptor. CTLA-4 is blamed for the suppressed immune response that is associated with
HIV infection. By blocking this suppressive activity MDX010 may enhance the anti-HIV immune
response and thus allow the body to fight HIV more effectively. It is currently in Phase I/II
testing.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 01, 2007, 04:31:16 am
more stuff to add to last post

Hemispherx Biopharma, Inc. company website: www.hemispherx.net and the Podell and King Medical Practice
website: www.drpodell.org Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals company website: www.holliseden.com
Medarex, Inc. company website: www.medarex.com
ALTERNATIVE
APPROACHES
With no end to the AIDS epidemic in sight scientists and drug manufacturers alike have begun
searching for alternative methods to turn the tides on the HIV virus. Because of HIV’s ability to
develop resistance and mutate, the current drugs have been able to only partially stem the tide
against HIV’s rapid reproduction and infection. Scientists have begun to think “outside the box”
when fighting HIV and AIDS. Currently pharmaceutical companies are developing multiple ways of
attacking HIV from filtering the blood through a dialysis machine to attacking the HIV virus’s inner
core. Innovative thinking will soon open the door to more novel and effective ways of attacking HIV.
The Hemopurifier - Aethlon Medical (OTC BB: AEMD.OB)
Researchers from Aethlon Medical have developed a potentially promising extracorporeal entry
inhibitor, the Hemopurifier (HIV dialysis). The Hemopurifier , by decreasing viral load, appears to
have a number of attributes necessary for a globally practical therapy for HIV, both as a conjunctive
and salvage therapy. And by removing mutant strains, could extend the life of currently approved
drugs and could represent a valuable lifecycle management strategy. The Hemopurifier is able to
clear infectious HIV, gp120 and other related toxins before infection occurs. Also, since the
Hemopurifier does not cause cross-resistance, and given the new government guidelines that
encourage the delay of initial drug regimens, it may be utilized as a first line therapy, reducing viral
load and delaying the need to start antiviral therapy. Aethlon Medical’s dialysis approach could also
represent an important adjunct therapy for current dialysis patients that are co-infected with HIV
(estimated to be a significant percent of the current kidney dialysis population). Aethlon also has
plans to use the Hemopurifier™ as a treatment countermeasure against drug and vaccine resistant
biological weapons. In one hour of treatment The Hemopurifier™ has cleared 90% of the toxic
protein gp-120, which depletes healthy immune cells.
58
Aethlon scientists are also researching the
capability of the Hemopurifier to regulate the overproduction of Cytokines, which could improve the
treatment outcomes of both infectious and autoimmune diseases



Azodicarbonamide (ADA) – Hubriphar (H-Phar) – Zinc Finger Inhibitor
ADA is the first zinc finger inhibitor, and it is currently in Phase I/II trials. Zinc fingers refer to the
chain of amino acids that hold the nucleocapsid or HIV inner core together. They are involved in
binding and packaging viral DNA. The purpose of zinc finger inhibitors (or zinc ejectors) is to break
apart and destroy these structures preventing the virus from functioning properly. The HIV core
does not mutate so drugs targeting them could last a long time, however, zinc fingers are not only
used by the HIV virus and destroying all zinc fingers in someone’s body could cause serious side
effects. Some of the side effects that have been seen in patients taking ADA include kidney pain
and urine abnormalities. ADA may be re-formulated so that it can be taken in smaller doses to
reduce side effects.
61
HGTV43 - Enzo Biochem Inc. (NYSE: ENZ) – Antisense Drug
Antisense drugs work by mirroring part of the HIV genetic code. They are short pieces of nucleic
acid that bind to specific parts of HIV’s genetic code. The drug locks on to the HIV virus and
prevents it from functioning properly. HGTV43 has had good in vitro results and it is beginning
Phase II trials. Solid efficacy has been shown in Phase I trials, and the drug seems to be well
tolerated.
62
VRX496 – VIRxSYS – Gene Therapy
Gene therapy, as opposed to other anti-HIV techniques, targets an earlier stage of virus
development. It interferes with the genetic processes by which HIV is made.
HIV can be treated as a genetic disorder because it takes its own RNA and converts it to DNA then
inserts it into the DNA of the infected cell. Through gene therapy scientists may be able to target
the HIV genes in infected cells correcting it as if it were a genetic disorder.
VRX496 is genetically modified to infect T-cells and attacks HIV's genetic code. It is in Phase I
studies. VRX496 can turn HIV against itself and is able to “cut” HIV’s genetic code. VRX496 may
serve as an alternative to HAART. It has been demonstrated to inhibit HIV replication b




One reason for the slow progress in AIDS vaccines is that scientists have never before faced the
challenge of developing vaccines that work by stimulating an immune response against a disease
that actually destroys the immune system. Also, the HIV virus mutates at a very fast pace, which
outmaneuvers potential vaccines. Furthermore, different parts of the world show different strains of
AIDS, which might require different vaccines.
However, experimental HIV/AIDS vaccines have proven effective to varying degrees in stringent
animal model tests that use virus challenges that are significantly higher than what is believed to
occur in most human exposures. Individuals who become infected with HIV do not succumb to the
disease for years even in the absence of anti-retroviral therapy, suggesting that the human immune
system is capable of controlling HIV infection partially or temporarily.
To combat the different issues facing an HIV vaccination, scientists are combining different
vaccines. Many are currently in testing including: canarypox plus gp120 (Phase III); DNA plus MVA
(Phase II); recombinant adenovirus plus canarypox (Phase I); canarypox plus lipopeptides (Phase
I); and DNA plus protein (Phase I); Chiron’s (NasdaqNM: CHIR) clade B DNA+novel envelope
vaccine (Phase 1); and DNA+fowlpox clade B vaccine (Phase 1) of the University of South Wales.
Some researchers anticipate that in developing countries between the years 2005 and 2010 some
44,000 people will participate in approximately five Phase II/B and Phase III trials of AIDS vaccin





Replicons
In recent years, a number of research teams have created virus-like particles that contain unrelated
genetic material, called 'replicons'. These are formed by using a carrier, or 'source' virus to take the
genetic material of an unrelated virus into a cell. Replicons have the same physical properties as
viruses, including the ability to enter cells of specific kinds, but they cannot reproduce themselves.
When it comes to HIV vaccines, the three leading replicon systems are now based on alphaviruses
called Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) and Semliki forest virus (SFV), and an unrelated virus
called adeno-associated virus (AAV).

ALVAC vCP205
HIV-1 subtype B envelope gp120 (MN) gene linked to the
transmembrane portion of gp41 (LAI); gag (LAI); and pol
[containing the protease portion-(LAI)], expressed in a canarypox
virus vector
gag p17 and p24, plus approximately 25 CTL epitopes (gag, pol,
nef and env) from HIV-1 subtype A, expressed in modified
vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) vector
Impfstoffwerk
Dessau-Tornau
GmbH (IDT)
HIV-1 subtype E envelope gp120-TM (from a primary isolate); gag
and pol [containing the protease portion) genes from HIV-1
subtype B -(LAI), expressed in a canarypox virus vector



PEPTIDE VACCINES
Instead of vaccinating with a whole protein, another approach is to use a fragment of a protein,
called a peptide, which consists of a few amino acids. A vaccine containing the V3 sequences from
several strains of HIV has been used in animals and produced antibodies able to neutralize several
laboratory-adapted virus strains. Another more novel way of using a particular peptide, identified as
the target for a broadly active neutralizing antibody against HIV, is to express it on the surface of
the common cold virus. This allows the generation of a range of different varieties and the selection
of those that give the strongest immune responses. Synthetic peptides can be linked to lipid
molecules to facilitate induction of cell-mediated immune responses. Peptides can be combined as
multi-peptide vaccines as a strategy for increasing the breadth of the vaccine-induced response.
67
Product Name
Phase




REGULATORY PROTEINS
Several groups of researchers have been investigating the use of HIV proteins other than the
envelope proteins in vaccines. Most attention has been given to the structural (e.g. Gag) and
regulatory proteins (e.g. Tat, Nef) produced by HIV. The regulatory protein Tat is produced early
after a cell is infected with HIV, which means that cellular immune responses may destroy infected
cells before they have a chance to release more virus particles. A further advantage of this
approach is that Tat is vital to the functioning of HIV and seems to vary little between different HIV
subtypes. The Nef protein is also of interest, despite the fact that some HIV strains can infect and
cause disease without it. If cellular immune responses target cells expressing Nef, they could select
for less virulent viruses.
68




BACTERIAL DELIVERY OF DNA
As DNA vaccines are grown inside bacteria, it may be possible to use the bacteria themselves as the
vaccine. Immune responses can be induced to DNA plasmids included in weakened vaccine strains
of such bacteria as Salmonella and Shigella, which usually infect humans via the oral route and
induce strong mucosal immune responses If this strategy succeeds, it opens the way to an oral
vaccine.
Product Name
Phase
Description
Manufacturer
GTU-MultiHIV B clade
Phase
I/II
GTU®MultiHIV B clade, DNA based vaccine containing a naked
DNA plasmid. Antigens: nef, rev, tat, gag, pol, env, CTL epitopes.
FIT Biotech
(source: the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) website)
OTHER VECTORS
Of the other viral vectors being studied with HIV, measles is of particular interest. The live
attenuated measles vaccine in common use is extremely effective in generating long-lasting
immune responses when given to infants, which can be boosted in adolescents. This might be ideal
to protect young people in countries where HIV is widespread.
NEW FRONTIERS
Recently, a novel system to develop and screen for potential vaccines has been developed. The
process is known as “Molecular Breeding” and was developed by Maxygen Inc. (NasdaqNM:
MAXY). The process consists of placing chopped up viral sequences in a test tube. The gene
fragments then express their corresponding proteins. This enables researchers to select the proteins
with desired properties, such as the ability to bind strongly to a particular HIV antibody. The
selected sequences are then used to start the whole process over again. In time this can produce
virus gene sequences that illicit an even stronger immune response.
Page 46
45
VACCINE-LIKE TREATMENTS
PEHRG214 – Virionyx
Scientists are also attempting to stimulate the immune system using a genetically engineered group
of antibodies to HIV similar to a vaccine. It will be administered to patients who currently are
infected with the HIV virus. PEHRG214 uses antibodies from immunized goat plasma to target
portions of the HIV virus that are not recognized by the human immune system but are readily
recognized by goat immune systems. PEHRG214 may also be referred to as a “passive immuno-
therapeutic pharmaceutical” and is currently in a Phase II trial.
69
DermaVir® - Research Institute for Genetic & Human Therapy (RIGHT)
DermaVir® is a novel therapeutic vaccine that is applied to the skin. It is the least invasive of
antiviral treatment and can be administered as little as 8 times a year. It is in Phase I trials. The
infrequent dosing, high viral suppression and low toxicity profile make DermaVir® very appealing to
patients. It also appears to prevent viral rebound. DermaVir® will most likely be used along with
standard HAART treatments.
70
VIR201- Virax Holdings Limited (ASX: VHL)
VIR201, in Phase I/IIa trials, uses DNA vaccine technology called Co-X-Gene. This vaccine carries a
fake virus onto which HIV and human genetic material have been grafted. The vaccine stimulates
the HIV-specific immune response to fight the HIV virus. This vaccine will be helpful in people with
low levels of HIV in their blood because it will help them to continue fighting the virus even when
the body would normally stop
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Mike89406 on March 02, 2007, 01:20:19 am
I dont doubt that companies are competing worldwide to develop the magic serum but I must caution some not to fully rely on a cure being developed as soon as people would hope.

Its basically like being skeptical but cautiously optimistic. I was told by well respected researchers and HIV docs not to expect a cure but to live you're life as if there was never going to be one.

So instead of being sadly disappointed and wasting precious energy you wont be surprised if one isn't developed but if something is developed then you can be surprised but not so much to affecting you're quality of life worrying or living a roller coaster life when their are setbacks in research.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 03, 2007, 02:17:23 am
check out all these exciting new breakthroughs that are being announced at conferences this week
many many huge advances, DAPY compounds that block all resistant versions of the virus.  (this discovery could have been in nature magazine a year ago or science but editors said it was not broad enough) 
this is huge huge stuff

DAPY compounds that block all resistant versions of the virus.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ihavehope on March 05, 2007, 11:39:03 am
Thebody.com

Understanding Lifespan
Jan 30, 2007

Dr Wohl, in your recent podcast interview, you mentioned a recent study that was done to try to find out the "cost of HIV treatment". A side effect of this study was that the study came up with an "average lifespan" number of 24.2 years based on current treatments and starting treatment around the current US guidelines of CD4~350/15%.

This seems to be in conflict with the CDC's June 2005 update. Which states that there are about 1.1 million Americans who are HIV positive (between 1 and 1.2 million). The 18,000 annual AIDS deaths would be only 1.6% of this population. This means an annual remainder of 98.4%. A simple calculation (.984^43=.50) shows that at this rate of attrition it would take about 43 years on average for the HIV positives to die from AIDS (i.e. for half of them to succumb to one of the 30 or so old diseases that are called AIDS if the patient is HIV positive).

I guess I'm finding it hard to understand the discrepancy in the two sets of numbers...

I understand that there are many many factors that go into these kind of "statistics", with the most important among these being how variable each individual person responds to the particular strain and subsequent mutations of their virus.

I also understand that many of these "lifespan" numbers are just statistical mathematics, which covers things like averages of averages, etc.

To help understand this on a more personal level, can you tell me if I'm understand the following facts correctly (understanding that each one assumes "responds well"):

1) Based on current guidelines, treatment should start (and not see "interruptions") roughly around CD4<(350/15%), especially if the VL is High (>100,000)

2) Those that have a "non-resistant" strain and maintain strict compliance with their treatment plan can HOPE to see VL become undetectable and see CD4 rise over time.

3) Those that start treatment around 350 and respond well could hope to see CD4 rise upwards of approx 500 with a few responding so well as to near the level of 800 (which is the lowest range of "normal").

4) Those that see VL not reaching undetectable are probably facing some amount of drug resistant strains of the virus in their system.

5) Those that reach undetectable VL, but don't see increases in CD4 may be experiencing a deeper level of infection of Latent HIV Reservoirs (marrow, brain, & CD4 "stem cells" that are infected) such that while not contributing new virus to the bloodstream, those long lived cells are passing HIV via normal stem cell mitosis and subsequent differentiation, meaning that the resulting "new" CD4 cells are often short lived and may not reach maturity in a beleaguered Thalamus.

6) People don't die from HIV, they die from Opportunistic Infections and basically what amounts to long term treatment toxicities. It's this one that I'm finding a degree of conflicting information around.

6a) Would it be correct to say that "Age", and thus lifespan, is predominately an effect of a cell's ability to maintain healthy mitacondria? We age because as the mitacondria in our cells replicate both oxidation as well as generational "errors in replication" result in depletion of mitacondria as well as less "healthy" mitacondria over time.

6b) So with treatment while we might maintain "near healthy" CD4 levels and undetectable VL which can prevent most OIs, there is still the combination of HIV's direct effect on cells (increased Apoptosis) which when combined with mitacondrial depletion being caused by most of today's HIV medications, will still result in shorter lifespans than might be considered "normal"?

 
 
 
  Response from Dr. Wohl

You raise many important points. It will be difficult to answer all of your excellent questions in detail as the text of such an answer would be the basis of a nice book reviewing much of what is known about HIV infection.

As far as the article I described in the podcast, the paper presented results generated from a computer simulation of a hypothetical cohort of patients starting therapy. It is not an accounting of what is happening now to the mix of HIV+ people who are at various stages of HIV infection and HIV treatment. The 24 year estimate is to be taken with a large grain of salt. The computer can not take into account everything that influences life expectancy. It also does not incorporate major advances in HIV care that I think are inevitable.

The bottom line regarding treatment is that current HIV therapy is potent and in the majority of patients will drive the viral load to very low levels, permitting growth of the T-cells. How long this lasts depends on many factors - treatment adherence and pre-treatment drug resistance being major factors. How high the T-cell count can go is very individual but generally those starting with a T-cell count of 200+ will see increases that approach or enter into the normal range.

At present, most all people with HIV infection should start therapy before the T-cell count drops below 350. If HIV is detected at a lower count, therapy should start right away. There are data suggesting starting HIV therapy at higher T-cell counts may be even better. We will see if this translates into a tendency to initiate therapy even sooner in the course of infection - I think it might.

The causes of death among people with HIV are less and less related to opportunistic infections (in the US and Europe, at least). Liver disease, typically as a result of hepatitis, is a major cause of death as are cancers - some of which may be arguably related to immunosuppression from HIV but also from increasing age of those with HIV. Infections are a problem mostly in those with really low T-cell counts. Cardiovascular disease also accounts for some deaths among HIV+ folks, but this is also the major cause of death among people living in the US, Canada and Europe. The contribution of HIV therapy to heart disease developing among people living with HIV, so far, seems to be low.

There is more to life, and death, than mitochondria.

In short, HIV therapy is good. All the data we have so far demonstrates that HIV meds prolong life - how long we just do not know at this point. There are side effects of these meds but it looks like the side effects of HIV itself trump these and are more life-threatening to more people. Starting HIV therapy before the T-cell count declines below 350 is beneficial. Taking meds that are potent and active against the virus an individual harbors and taking them as directed reduces the risk of their failure.

I hope this helps.

DW
 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Zanarkand on March 05, 2007, 12:52:22 pm
I think it will be within the next 5-10 years.

Within the next 5 years I expect that there would be almost side effect less drugs.
Within the next 10 years I expect that there would be a cell that can replicate itself to destroy active HIV
Within the next 15 years I expect that a complete cure would be found
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jake72 on March 05, 2007, 03:39:48 pm
From a theoretical point of view (it's, of course, too early to consider it seriously at this point), it's interesting to wonder what the world (at least the developed world, and assuming that everyone who needs the cure/vaccine gets it) will be like when HIV is cured or at least suppressed for good through therapeutic vaccination. 
In addition to the expected euphoria, there will probably be more disinhibition-lots more people throwing caution to the wind and having unprotected sex as if it were 1975 (despite the existence of many other STIs).
There will also have to be retraining/reorientation of a lot of medical and social services professionals who have built their lives, practices, and organizations around HIV and HIV-positive people.
And then, not least of all, there will be a lot of psychological and emotional stuff to deal with as people who have spent decades fighting a physically and mentally draining, serious, stigmatized, highly political disease are suddenly off meds and expected  to "just get on with their lives."  Will there be resources to deal with this?
As I said, it's too early to argue this seriously, but it kind of makes you wonder.  Needless to say, I hope the day comes sooner than many of us think.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 11, 2007, 03:17:51 pm
Yeah - I think that's a really interesting point. I mean I love the science, but what would the world look like without HIV. How would we all cope? I think this site would have to keep running for a while, for us all to swap stories and reminisce.

I'm planning on going into HIV medicine when I'm qualified - I can't imagine a happier way of being made unemployed. I'll just have to work on some other nasty virus.

Personally, if I was cured I would either bareback only in a committed relationship or have rigorously safe sex. Who knows what nasty virus might emerge next? There was only a 50 year gap between syphillis being curable (from being a major killer/maimer) overnight and the advent of HIV. So there's normally something incurable lurking around... And the people that catch it first die, like with HIV.

Matt.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: risred1 on March 11, 2007, 06:40:31 pm
There are many "chronic" conditions out there that cannot be cured.

I have a friend with Lyme disease that cannot be treated by antibiotics. He will have to live with it for life, and manage the disease. Sound familiar?

HIV ability to just stay hidden in the body is pretty compelling to it not being able to be "removed".

Like other virus's such as Herpes, maybe we can keep it suppressed hopefully with better and better treatment, or a cure equivalent where the immune system can manage it for us!

I am hopeful for control, I'm pretty resigned to not see a "cure", as that is the nature of certain types of dieseases.

And I'm optimistic about living with HIV. I continue to have hope that a vaccine can be of great help in managing HIV.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: milker on March 11, 2007, 10:15:19 pm
risred1 makes a good point. The problem is the hidden HIV I think.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if there are cases of people that have been "undetectable" for more than 10 years without meds. If this is the case, then I would think that they managed to kick out the virus for good and this is a great thing. They will be test hiv+ because they have antibodies, but they're out of it, and possibly completely immune. I'm new to this so I don't know if we've seen such cases yet.

What I find interesting is people that have a viral load of 100000+ then drop to undetectable to 70 to 1000 to undetectable etc..

Those, from what I understand are affected by mutants that made it during the rna conversion and are hiding, or "maturing". They are weak, most will die because of darwin selection, but others will survive. The mutation test (i don't remember its name) is rarely disclosed, and I haven't seen it on people's reports here in those forums, but it could be an indicator as what's going on. Remember, the results we get are per cubic millimeter, so there are actually zillions of viruses in our body, not just 40, and the sample is taken from blood in the arm, not in the glands that may host mutants or hidden viruses.

The mutation is not on purpose, it's an "error" that happens during rna/dna conversion, but that error seems to confuse/give more work to CD4s, which are already weakened by the virus using them as a factory.

I like the new "entry drugs" because they work on disabling entry to the cell by either having the CD4 "ignore" the virus, which then just dies of boredom, or confuse the virus that thinks it got a good bind but then gets its entry protein wiped out and is unable to do anything.

I'm totally not an hiv specialist, the first time I learned about how all this works was few days ago, but i'm a fast learner and I'm very logical (this is the basis of my day job), and by applying logic after reading how the virus works I don't see how rna-dependent polymerase or other transcriptase meds can get the count of viruses to zero. I'm talking about a cure here, not an avoidance against OIs, so don't get me wrong, I DO believe that those existing drugs ARE working to keep us alive, but it's not a "cure".

Maybe i'm completely wrong, let me know.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 12, 2007, 07:40:13 pm
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if there are cases of people that have been "undetectable" for more than 10 years without meds. If this is the case, then I would think that they managed to kick out the virus for good and this is a great thing. They will be test hiv+ because they have antibodies, but they're out of it, and possibly completely immune. I'm new to this so I don't know if we've seen such cases yet.

Maybe i'm completely wrong, let me know.

You're completely wrong! At least on this point. Nobody has ever kicked out the virus for good. A small number of people who remain undetectable for long periods of time on HAART serorevert - i.e. they no longer have antibodies to HIV, and would test negative on an HIV antibody test. However, if you take away the HAART, viral load rebounds to whatever it would have been if HAART had never been taken. So you've got that part of it the wrong way round. That's why at the moment, once you're on therapy, you're on it for life.

The reason the VL rebounds is because of latency - pools of infected, but dormant, immune cells that persist for upto 60 years. Periodically the virus in them is activated, resulting in blips of activity. If no HAART were constantly present, the VL would quickly reinfect and destroy new CD4 cells.

The people you refer to who obtain undetectability without drugs are rare, and it's usually down to their genetics. The most common reason is an inherited deletion of del32, which results in less CCR5 receptors on CD4 cells, which are used as a common co-receptor by the virus to get into cells. Some of them may have a weaker strain, with less reproductive capacity.

Hence the new CCR5 inhibitor, maraviroc. The problem I have with drugs like this is that they modify the patients' immune systems, rather than anything specific to HIV. With CCR5 this is unlikely to be a problem, as there are people walking around with no CCR5 receptors at the moment as part of natural variation, but you have to wonder with other drugs coming down the pipeline.

You're right. HIV is what is known as a "sloppy copier". It's not great because it means that the genes in HIV are constantly being slightly altered. Certain classes of drugs, like the NNRTIs are very fragile and only a small mutation is needed for HIV to be resistant to the entire class of drugs. The development of more resistant drugs in the NNRTI class is beginning to bear fruit, such as TMC125 from Tibotec.

All in all, HIV is a fascinating virus, and certainly there are major advances in the pipeline. The question of cure is a pretty contoversial one - the twin problems of compartments (getting anti-HIV drugs into the brain/balls/other sites they don't penetrate that well) and latency, described above, both need to be overcome.

Matt.


Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: milker on March 12, 2007, 08:34:26 pm
Matt, this is exactely what i'm saying, and that you confirm what I wasn't sure: there are no cases of undetectable people that stay like this for 10 years or more with meds. What I was saying was "IF there were such cases"!

As for seroreversion, the only thing I could find is studies from 1996 and 1999 and stuff about infants that are hiv at birth then serorevert later, but nothing else, which make me think that at that time the tests were not sensitive enough? Do you have anything about this, I couldn't find anything on here either.

I think we're saying the same thing, at least what you say is exactely what I was trying to say :D
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 13, 2007, 05:41:47 pm
Huh?!  ???
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: milker on March 13, 2007, 08:22:40 pm
He says:

"God show me the cure to aids, but without instructions".

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Ocp5YWklfqet2wm5emxm2bT9vg--?cq=1

edited to add:

and he says "Oh, I am not a homosexual nor am I sick."

Lovely..

Next!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: russian on March 14, 2007, 05:41:23 am
hello

is it interesting?

http://www.bioportfolio.com/january2007/26_01_2007/BIT225_presents_positive.html

BIT225 presents positive preclinical data on anti-HIV drug
Virus Weekly via NewsEdge Corporation :

2007 JAN 30 - (NewsRx.com) -- Biotron Limited has presented preclinical efficacy data on its anti-HIV drug BIT225 at HIV DART 2006 in Cancun, Mexico.

HIV DART 2006 focused on 'Frontiers in Drug Development for Antiretroviral Therapies' and assembled clinicians, researchers, scientists and pharmaceutical company representatives from around the world. Biotron presented preclinical data showing the antiviral effect of BIT225 in macrophage cells.

These cells are one of the major reservoirs of HIV infection in humans, and current HIV treatments are not effective against HIV in these cells. In HIV-infected patients HIV hides in the reservoir cells, where it replicates and is released into the blood, where it infects CD4 T cells, setting up a continual cycle of infection and re-infection in the body. Biotron presented data demonstrating that BIT225 is able to prevent spread of virus between these reservoir cells and also stops transmission of HIV to CD4 T cells.

Biotron's presentation on BIT225 received an award at the meeting, demonstrating the high level of interest in its antiviral program. The award is also an acknowledgment of the robustness of the science underlying the company's programs.

BIT225 represents a novel, first in class approach to the treatment of HIV. BIT225 is specifically active in HIV reservoir cells and represents an opportunity to attack HIV at its source. As previously advised, the company is currently completing formal preclinical safety studies and preparing ethics and regulatory submissions for approval to commence human clinical trials early in 2007.

This article was prepared by Virus Weekly editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2007, Virus Weekly via NewsRx.com.

<<Virus Weekly -- 01/26/07>>
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bigtiger on March 14, 2007, 09:30:21 am
i feel that the cure is around the corner finally
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: putin22 on March 14, 2007, 11:58:34 am
it seems that bit225 can eliminate hiv latent reservoirs.

BIT225 is specifically active in HIV reservoir cells and represents an opportunity to attack HIV at its source
 
IS THIS  THE CURE?

WOW
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 14, 2007, 02:36:40 pm


Biotron’s lead compound hits HIV by a novel mechanism of action. BIT225,
which goes to the clinic late in 2006, is the first of a potential new class of HIV drug.
The clinical demand for new kinds of HIV drugs is strong. And BIT225’s apparent
ability to target ‘viral reservoirs’ hitherto out of reach of existing HIV drugs should
make it particularly attractive to potential licensing partners.
Hepatitis C is an unmet clinical need. The science behind BIT225 has also
enabled Biotron to identify some promising potential Hepatitis C drug candidates.
Hepatitis C is a US$3bn market that is markedly underserved by the existing drugs.
We expect that Biotron’s Hep C drug will go to the clinic in late 2007.

Biotron has completed a $4.6m capital raising. This will fund
Phase I/IIa clinical trials for Biotron’s lead compound, the anti-
HIV drug BIT225, as well as for an anti-Hepatitis C compound.
Biotron’s Hep C programme, where a clinical candidate is
expected to be selected soon, has enormous upside given the
current state of the Hep C therapeutics market
We expect strong partnering interest in both HIV and Hep C
Biotron’s compounds have also shown potential against the
dengue and SARS viruses. And at least one proprietary
compound has successfully targeted the H5N1 strain of bird flu


Why Biotron’s BIT225 drug is worth backing in HIV. Biotron has rationally designed a library
of 200 novel compounds that are VPU inhibitors. The best of the best of these compounds,
BIT225, is good at hitting HIV and it’s also:
potentially a pill (68% of the drug gets into the bloodstream via the gut wall);
possessed of good drug-like qualities in terms of safety, stability and half-life;
effective against drug- resistant strains of HIV;
easy to make and;
‘synergistic’ with existing HIV drugs, boosting its chances of being favoured by
clinicians.
Why Biotron’s anti-Hepatitis C concept is worth backing. Biotron has obtained experimental
evidence that the scientific approach it has taken in HIV could also be used in Hepatitis C.
Page 2 of 4
Southern Cross Equities
Page 3
Biotron (BIT)
A timeline for Biotron looking forward
BIT225
Q2 ‘06 – Completion of production of BIT225 for trial purposes
Q4 ’06 – Completion of formulation of BIT225 so that it can be injected into patients. Various
dossiers filed with the regulators and ethics committees ahead of BIT225’s first human trial.
Q4 ’06 – Announcement of BIT225 Phase I/IIa (ie early stage) trial structure and commencement
of dosing
Q2 ’07 – Results of I/IIa trial announced





Level 8, 261 George Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Tel: (61-2) 9247 8212
Fax: (61-2) 9247 3932
E-mail: pnightingale@biotron.com.au
Website: www.biotron.com.au
11 July 2006

20 Bridge Street
Sydney NSW 2000
(2 pages by email)
Dear Madam
MANUFACTURE OF BIOTRON'S ANTI-HIV DRUG BIT225
The Directors of Biotron Limited ('Biotron' or 'the Company') are pleased to advise that
commercial manufacture the Company’s lead anti-HIV drug, BIT225, is on schedule with the
manufacturing of the first of two 2.5 kilogram batches of GMP-grade BIT225 having been
completed.
As previously advised, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd, Hyderabad, India was contracted to
manufacture and supply 5 kilograms of GMP-grade BIT225.
The commercial GMP
manufacturing process was divided into two 2.5 kilogram batches to minimise any risk associated
with the manufacturing process and to validate the process. The contract included process
development and scale up of the manufacturing process from the previous bench top scale to large
scale reactors. Process development and scale up was completed prior to manufacture of the first
2.5 kilogram batch and manufacture of the second batch of BIT225 is underway.
Excellent results have been achieved in terms of product quality, and have demonstrated that
BIT225 may be successfully scaled up from lab to commercial scale. The manufacturing is being
done to audited international regulatory standards and will be suitable for use in human clinical
trials.
In parallel with the manufacture of GMP-grade BIT225, preclinical safety studies are in progress
with a European contract research organisation. These studies include longer-term, chronic,
multiple-dosing toxicity tests in two species of animals, as well as additional in vitro safety tests.
The Directors are pleased with the progress of these studies and results to date have been
consistent with preliminary safety studies undertaken during the lead compound selection
progress. The data from these studies and the preliminary safety studies will be submitted to
appropriate hospital, ethics and regulatory authorities to support approval for commencement of a
Phase I/IIa human clinical trial for HIV.
Page 2
2
BIT225 represents a novel, first in class approach to the treatment of HIV. BIT225 has a new
mode of action against HIV compared to existing anti-HIV therapies, targeting the Vpu protein of
HIV. By blocking a new pathway in HIV infectivity, Biotron’s Vpu inhibitors have the potential
to combat drug-resistant viral strains, in combination with highly active antiretroviral therapies
('HAART') and in monotherapy. Unlike existing drugs, BIT225 is active in the viral reservoir in
the body, and complete elimination of HIV from infected patients is not possible unless these
underlying reservoirs of infection can be cleared. BIT225 represents an opportunity to eliminate
the underlying seat of infection, potentially leading to a cure for HIV.
In summary, commercial GMP scale-up and manufacture of BIT225 as well as the formal
preclinical safety studies are on track for completion this calendar year. Biotron is finalising the
site and design of the proposed Phase I/IIA human clinical trial.
For further information, please contact Dr. Michelle Miller, CEO, on (61-2) 61258001.
Yours sincerely
Peter J. Nightingale








http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=BIT225&btnG=Google+Search



Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, June 2004, p. 2325-2330, Vol. 48, No. 6
0066-4804/04/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AAC.48.6.2325-2330.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Potential New Anti-Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Compounds Depress Virus Replication in Cultured Human Macrophages
Gary D. Ewart,1* Najla Nasr,2 Hassan Naif,2 Graeme B. Cox,3 Anthony L. Cunningham,2 and Peter W. Gage3

Biotron Limited,1 John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601,3 Westmead Millenium Institute, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia2

Received 3 November 2003/ Returned for modification 6 January 2004/ Accepted 20 February 2004

We report that the amiloride analogues 5-(N,N-hexamethylene)amiloride and 5-(N,N-dimethyl)amiloride inhibit, at micromolar concentrations, the replication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) in cultured human blood monocyte-derived macrophages. These compounds also inhibit the in vitro activities of the HIV-1 Vpu protein and might represent lead compounds for a new class of anti-HIV-1 drugs.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 14, 2007, 08:41:44 pm
This is not going to be a cure. It's another possible HIV drug. Lots of drugs fail at Phase I/II clinical trials, so this one is not blowing my skirt up yet. The other thing is that macrophages are only one of the cell types used as viral reservoirs.

How about telling us what you think, rather than cutting and pasting huge posts? There's tons of this stuff on the internet, I read it too - but I don't consider the bulk of it worth posting. What, in your opinion, makes this drug special?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: magilla on March 16, 2007, 01:04:00 pm
Do you know this?



Researchers Devise Method for Natural Killer Cells to Destroy Hiding HIV

   Additional Resources
   
For appointments, call the Central Appointment Office at 507-284-2111. 
 
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ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a way to manipulate the body’s own natural killer cells to destroy cells containing the HIV virus. Current treatments for HIV block the virus from replicating, but don’t kill the cells that contain HIV. The existence of these HIV-harboring cells -- often called the “latent” or “resting reservoir” -- is regarded by many to be the main obstacle to finding a cure for HIV.

“These drugs used to treat patients today -- which do an excellent job on suppressing replicating virus -- do nothing for the infectious virus contained within the latent reservoir,” says Andrew Badley, M.D., the lead immunovirologist of the Mayo Clinic research team. “If we can find a way to kill the virus that is present within the latent reservoir, we are on to a promising path towards a cure for HIV.”

To address the latent reservoir problem, Dr. Badley’s team built upon their earlier findings that showed a molecule named TRAIL to be a potential agent for treating HIV within the resting reservoir. The experiment was performed on cells taken from HIV-infected patients and then treated in laboratory test tubes. Results showed the molecule was effective in killing the HIV cells in a majority of samples. While successful in test tubes, this approach is many years away from being tested on patients in clinical trials. The research findings appear today in the online edition of the June 11 issue of the Journal of Virology (http://jvi.asm.org).

Significance of the Mayo Clinic Research The “resting reservoir” refers to HIV virus particles within cells that have stopped replicating. Consequently, the HIV within these cells eludes current drug treatments because these drugs only work on actively replicating HIV. This allows the HIV to hide in a dormant or resting stage in certain cells. The resting reservoir serves as a kind of HIV time bomb that can detonate if a patient stops HIV treatment or becomes resistant to current drugs.

The TRAIL molecule TRAIL is a naturally-occurring molecule made by many cells of the immune system. For reasons that are as yet unclear, it possesses the ability to kill only abnormal cells, such as cancer cells or those containing HIV. It sends signals to prompt cell death in the abnormal cells, while leaving healthy cells alone.

This seek-and-destroy ability of TRAIL is also under investigation for the treatment of certain cancers, but the Mayo Clinic researchers are the first to publish results on TRAIL as a possible immunotherapeutic treatment for HIV infection and AIDS.

The Experiment The team set out to discover if TRAIL could work against human cells in a test tube and also if the body could be prompted to produce more TRAIL.

The researchers treated cells from HIV-infected patients with recombinant TRAIL, and in all cases, such treatments reduced the amount of virus present. “And in three out of five test tube samples, we were able to destroy all signs of HIV. Therefore TRAIL shows promise as a way of disabling the latent reservoir in the test tube,” Dr. Badley says.

To investigate the second point, the researchers investigated two compounds to see how they increase the function of natural killer cells both from HIV-infected patients, and from non-HIV-infected patients. Like many other immune system members, natural killer cells make TRAIL. Researchers wanted to find a way to induce them to produce more TRAIL. The two compounds they thought might be able to do that belong to the same family of Interleukins, specialized proteins which are widely known to be important players in the immune system for communicating messages. The research team compared the effectiveness of Interleukin-15 (IL-15) and Interleukin-7 (IL-7) at increasing the immune system’s ability to kill HIV infection. Results show that both enhance NK cell function, but that they work differently. Of the two, IL-15 increases the expression of TRAIL. “It therefore may be the more promising immunotherapeutic agent for HIV,” Dr. Badley says.

Currently neither TRAIL nor Interleukin-15 has been tested in patients. “We hope to pursue such work in the future. But in the here and now, I’d simply say we are very encouraged by our results,” says Dr. Badley.

Other authors of the study are, from Ottawa Health Research Institute, University of Ottawa: Julian J. Lum, Zilin Nie (also of Mayo Clinic), Jaime Sanchez-Dardon, Georgina L. Mbisa, Nanci Hawley, Shanil Narayan; from the National HIV/AIDS Laboratories, Health Canada: Jennifer Mihowich and John E. Kim; and from Immunex Corporation, Seattle: David H. Lynch.

Dr. Badley is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Bob Nellis
507-284-5005 (days)
507-284-2511 (evenings)
e-mail: newsbureau@mayo.edu

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on March 16, 2007, 08:14:51 pm
As thrilling as it is to read about "exciting new breakthroughs in HIV therapy" (words that I can recall having seen dozens of times since I began taking a casual interest in the subject in the late 1990s), it would seem that with the exception of new drugs, we're still working in the paradigm of HAART.

Phase I/II trials are absolutely nothing... nothing to get excited over. 

What works beautifully in a lab is often thrown into complete disarray when dealing with the complex system that is the human body.

Pharmokinetics, tolerability, safety, efficacy... there are any number of issues that could cause a drug to fail at the beginning of the pipeline... and many promising innovations in drug therapy for any number of diseases have had to be abandoned because the drugs that had previously been touted as "exciting breakthroughs" didn't work so well. 

You don't hear a lot about those.  Really, does anyone ever wonder why you don't hear too many follow-ups on these "new and exciting" announcements from labs?

But look up "TGN1412" in Google to see just one of the many things that can go wrong in a clinical trial.

Me, I don't get too excited about press releases and "promising laboratory indications."  A hell of a lot of them go absolutely nowhere for hundreds of reasons.... like the drug they developed kills people.

Personally, I start paying serious attention around phase III.

And I only pop open a bottle of bubbly when the new drug appears on my insurance company formulary.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: milker on March 16, 2007, 08:29:28 pm
I didn't want to intervene before because I don't even take the drugs yet, but what aupoint said was my feeling. I've heard about "amazingly promising drugs" since 1985, and yes, some of them have been amazing, but so few. I agree, stage III is where is da shit that would start getting me excited (and I get excited by much less, usually, but you don't want to know).
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 17, 2007, 12:10:50 am
I totally disagree with this statement, "Phase I/II trials are absolutely nothing... nothing to get excited over."

First to even get to phase I it takes an idea, a light bulb going off in a scientists mind, a researcher, after working for years and decades, and reading and learning and saying hey this new development over here leads me to this new idea.  Then they try that idea on a few cells in a dish, wow they find that it works it is a big discovery, people win the nobel prize even at this level, then they do little mice trials probably have phases too, and wow they now have mice that have the disease so they have mice models, called murine models, mice with diabetes, mice with all types of human diseases, they try their new idea on the mice and many different dose levels, WOW they find that it works, wow its great, the find the best dose then, the know from experience that a mouse dose is 1mg and a human dose is 100 mg for example, then they try phase one two etc, different doses starting out at tiny tiny doses.  anyway then if it works and not too many bad things, they go up to phase three which is just more people, so really by phase 2 alot is known and it is really a big big deal that it works in phase 2 it has already worked in 5 steps before that...

the other reason to be excitied is we are now past the tipping point of the virus, it use to be that they knew nothing about hiv and alot about cancer, now they know say 90% of hiv and everyday are finding new things

The writer i disagree with wrote, "But look up "TGN1412" in Google to see just one of the many things that can go wrong in a clinical trial."   forget about the TGN1412, yes there was a small problem, but it was only because this new gene therapy stuff, genetic engineering and actually dna manipulation is very tricky, the tgn1412 thing was very simple... went like this... they found this perfect cool thing that worked in the dish, worked in the mouse, worked in the chip and monkey (oh i forgot that part above there are always monkey and chimp trials tests before phase one in human)  anyway, the genetic therapy worked great in all these animals so they thought well we give 1mg to a mouse so lets try instead of 100 mg for a human,   1/500 of a milligram just to be sure, they give a super low dose to humans, and they did it at same time silly english people, but really it was a tiny tiny dose, so then some the volenteers had a bad reaction, because, hey the scientists made a huge discovery, the human body has like 1000 times more receptors for this gene therapy than a monkey or mouse, human system is much more complicated, big deal, it was dosing... of super new gene therapy... not the end of world, just from one silly dose issue do not throw out every phase 1 and phase 2 trial

also we are now in golden age of hiv research where all the hard deep science of 25 years and billions of dollars has finally paid off and they know 90% of what they need for cure

see my other posts on mostly research news

forget about that one thing... it was tiny blip, gene therapy itself is so so huge and gaigantic, it is like saying, a model T car caught on fire, autos will never work and zoom

new great advances that are going to win nobel prize and some have application to cancer as well as hiv

are being announced every week for the last 14 years, it is an exciting time in science

and on hiv

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: milker on March 17, 2007, 12:21:16 am
bizamek,

I don't think he was saying that unless phase III is reached it's shit. I think he was saying that unless level III is reached then this when we should get excited about. Level I and II studies are great but we've seen so many of them that failed and didn't reach level III I think this is what he was saying.

Milker
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on March 17, 2007, 12:38:49 am
TGN1412 didn't cause "bad reactions" due to a "small problem."

Unless your definition of "bad reaction" is "systemic organ failure."

I used it to back up my point that many, many drugs have had to have been tossed aside because of unforeseen consequences in humans.  With all our computers and knowledge, we still gotta test it in people.  And more often than not those tests fail.  Either, in the words of the Verve, the drugs won't work, or because they kill people, or because the side-effects are intolerable... or for dozens of other reasons.

How many "breakthroughs" have been heralded in the press over the past 25 years regarding HIV?  I would be willing to bet it's somewhere in the hundreds, if not thousands.

How many drugs have been shown to really work on HIV?  Not counting repackaged deals... it stands at about 30, I believe.

The road to treating this virus is riddled with a lot of dead people and a lot of failed treatment attempts.

I simply demand to see results that show what they've developed a) works, and b) won't kill my ass.  I don't care how well it does in a test tube.  Bleach kills HIV in a test tube, but they don't prescribe Clorox.

My point is simply this... it's perhaps not advisable to wet our collective pants with glee every time an alleged new breakthrough has been potentially seen in a test tube.  There have been many disappointments, and there will be many more in the future. 

They tried selling poz people on AZT monotherapy in the 1980s thinking it would do great things for them.

What happened?

A lot of people died.  And a lot of people suffer from the toxicities today.

You're completely correct in that we know a great deal more about HIV than we did 20, 10, or even 5 years ago.  And who's to say how much we'll know in 10 years time?  But I would regard any statement about knowing "everything" about HIV with nothing but the highest skepticism. 

90% isn't 100%, and I doubt we'll get there in the next several decades.  They can't even predict the next year's flu strains accurately, for crying out loud. 

This virus has shown itself time and time again to be an extraordinarily wily opponent.

Every time a new treatment option is used... HIV figures out a way around it.

Who would have thought that the damn thing would go into reservoirs in 1995 with the advent of protease inhibitors?  Who would have thought that resistance to Viramune would equal resistance to every NNRTI currently available? 

These problems only came up when a new treatment was made available... because of the nature of the virus we're fighting.  Who's to say what this darling of natural selection will come up with with future treatment options?

The arrogance of and over-dependence in the infallibility of science is what got us into this mess in the first place.  In the 1960s and 1970s, everyone thought that infectious diseases were on the wane, antibiotics and vaccinations had beaten smallpox, childhood diseases, and syphilis.  Infectious disease ranked very low on the list of priorities at the time... simply because people had become too complacent in science's ability to solve all problems resulting from them.

Warning signs about a certain odd syndrome that seemed to result from immune system suppression were completely ignored... because hey, science had it all under control, and it couldn't possibly be a new virus, right?

Oops.

We were caught with our pants down (pardon the pun) because we thought we knew everything about infectious disease. 

This is why I have a certain amount of distrust in thinking that every breakthrough heralds the end of HIV... they haven't yet twenty four years after identifying HIV... and I highly doubt that they anything will.
 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: curmudgeonly on March 17, 2007, 01:07:19 am
Gee, didn't you know?  HIV was cured in the late 1990s.  Read U.S. newspapers and magazines from the period!  AIDS has dropped from the national focus and infections are rising again because many people know HIV infection is only a matter of taking a few pills every day for the rest of your life.  Like aspirin for heart attacks.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on March 17, 2007, 01:09:55 am
Gee, didn't you know?  HIV was cured in the late 1990s.  Read U.S. newspapers and magazines from the period!  AIDS has dropped from the national focus and infections are rising again because many people know HIV infection is only a matter of taking a few pills every day for the rest of your life.  Like aspirin for heart attacks.

My virus and I must have missed the memo.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 17, 2007, 12:17:19 pm
I miss the guy with the thing for fungus... How come his post has gone? It makes me going "huh?" earlier in the thread look a bit dense...!

He's probably decided his fungus-infected ferret needs a vet.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: curmudgeonly on March 17, 2007, 01:16:48 pm
Warning signs about a certain odd syndrome that seemed to result from immune system suppression were completely ignored... because hey, science had it all under control, and it couldn't possibly be a new virus, right?

As U.S. citizens we cannot forget a "disease only gay men got" was ignored and research was stymied for years at the very highest level of our government, President Ronald Reagan.   There were many scientists and doctors who recognized AIDS for what it is but funding was non-existent while Ronnie kept budgeting more and more for defense and slashing all other federally funded programs.  It wasn't until Rock Hudson was outed as moribund with AIDS that the national press gave AIDS closer scrutiny and it was mostly sensationalist crap even then.  Thousands of people died before Reagan even said the word AIDS in public.

Sorry to wander off-topic but it wasn't only scientific hubris which impeded the response to the pandemic, at least not in the USA.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on March 17, 2007, 01:41:05 pm
As U.S. citizens we cannot forget a "disease only gay men got" was ignored and research was stymied for years at the very highest level of our government, President Ronald Reagan.   There were many scientists and doctors who recognized AIDS for what it is but funding was non-existent while Ronnie kept budgeting more and more for defense and slashing all other federally funded programs.  It wasn't until Rock Hudson was outed as moribund with AIDS that the national press gave AIDS closer scrutiny and it was mostly sensationalist crap even then.  Thousands of people died before Reagan even said the word AIDS in public.

Sorry to wander off-topic but it wasn't only scientific hubris which impeded the response to the pandemic, at least not in the USA.

You're right.

But that was in the 1980s... when it was already way too late.  The response of the US government in the years after AIDS was first identified was criminal.

I'm referring to the warning signs that appeared in the preceding decades... first in the 1960s and then a bit more in the 1970s.  They were ignored.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Esquare on March 17, 2007, 04:13:50 pm
This is an interesting poll. I would consider those that visit these forums to be more up on the news of HIV treatment and potential for vaccines and cures. Does it amaze anyone else that 51 of 104 respondents say that they think HIV/AIDS will be cured in the near future? I voted yes but not in the next 10 years, call me conservative I guess.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 18, 2007, 04:25:56 pm
I would consider those that visit these forums to be more up on the news of HIV treatment and potential for vaccines and cures.

I think you're right, but I think if you look at any group of people living with a disease, a lot of them will say the cure is just around the corner. I personally think that people need hope in order to deal with something like this - and that skews things. I also think a subset of people deny themselves any hope in order to make sure they're "dealing with reality". I think the reality is inbetween these two viewpoints.

The cure is obviously NOT around the corner with HIV - nobody is anywhere near doing a study (itself a 2/3/4-year endeavour) with an expected outcome being the eradication of HIV. We'll be lucky to see it in the next 10 years. But neither has it yet to be shown to be an insurmountable problem, although I've read studies that have opined it is, it is not the overall view. Yet. I think Benj raises an important point in terms of the politics of this - the reason nobody has ever thrown up their hands and called cancer unsolvable is because of the sheer political clout and widespread nature of it. We have to make sure that we're not marginalised ('gay man's disease') and that we continue to lobby.

M.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 19, 2007, 03:42:22 am
Matt I respect your writing and think you have good things to say, but i disagree with this line, "The cure is obviously NOT around the corner with HIV - nobody is anywhere near doing a study (itself a 2/3/4-year endeavour) with an expected outcome being the eradication of HIV"

Firstly many animals have something inside themselves that suppresses the virus completely, and they live and thrive with no problem.  Scientists are very very close to mimicing that susbstance in human body for complete suppression of hiv virus.  very very close.  do a wikipedia search on herpes for example, there are 9 versions and 99% of people have 7 of them in their body and the body suppresses them completely just fine.

cats, hyenas, gorillas and monkey macaques they all completely supress virus naturally and that is exactly what science is trying to do and studying and working on every day for last 25 years, please read my posts about cd8 cells or other posts in research

if the virus is completely suppressed by the body I would call that a cure.  like i said you and  99% of population have 7 or 9 herpes viruses in body ...   9% of entire human geneome are retroviruses that got stuck there in last 5 billion years of evolution

do you know

only one in one million cd4 cells even has the hiv virus in it, no mater what your VL and cd4 count is... say you have VL very high or med or low, still only about one in one million cd4 cell is even infected.  and science just learned why a few months ago... it is called cd4 T cell homing, the immune system thinks the fight against the virus is over each day and sends a chemical signal to the cd4 cells to return to the node (even the ones that are not infected with hiv) and self distruct

when you say eradication of hiv... look you  and all humans have 6 herpes viruses all thru your body but the body suppresses all of them every day, they are not active they are in the cells all over the body but suppressed... i call that eradicated.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpesviridae


There are eight distinct viruses in this family known to cause disease in humans. These viruses are (HHV stands for human herpesviruses):   3-8 are in over 90% and most cases 99% of humans, 1 and 2 are in 33% or more of humans...

    * HHV-1 = HSV-1 (herpes simplex virus 1): causes oral and/or genital herpes (predominantly orofacial)
    * HHV-2 = HSV-2 (herpes simplex virus 2): causes oral and/or genital herpes (predominantly genital)
    * HHV-3 = VZV (varicella zoster virus): causes chickenpox and shingles
    * HHV-4 = EBV (Epstein-Barr virus), lymphocryptovirus: causes infectious mononucleosis, Burkitt's lymphoma,      CNS lymphoma in AIDS, PTLD or Post-transplant lymphoproliferative syndrome, and nasopharyngeal carcinoma
    * HHV-5 = CMV (cytomegalovirus): causes infectious mononucleosis, retinitis, etc.
    * HHV-6 = Roseolovirus: causes "sixth disease" (known as roseola infantum or exanthem subitum)
    * HHV-7 = closely related to HHV-6; causes roughly the same symptoms
    * HHV-8 = a type of rhadinovirus = KSHV = Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus: causes Kaposi's sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma and some types of multicentric Castleman's disease

B virus (Cercopithecine herpesvirus-1, herpesvirus simiae) is a simplexvirus endemic in macaque monkeys. Human zoonotic infection with this virus results in severe pathogenesis and often death in untreated individuals.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 19, 2007, 03:49:25 am
I am posting this to show that humans have viruses in their bodies and that the body can naturally suppress and to me that is a cure, suppression, science is very close to finding the suppressor vaccines, gene therapy,  meds that stop hiv ... i am not talking about nukes, non nukes and protiease,
i am talking about  Nef, TAT, vue, inhibitors, and other new things...


http://www.herpes.org.uk/ George Kinghorn, GU consultant in Sheffield told us: "What I am suggesting to you is that to be infected with a herpes simplex virus is a state of normality. We tend to make this into a big deal instead of to say that to be infected with herpes virus is something that happens to all adults, some with symptoms and some of us without." Read the full text of Dr Kinghorn's talk

1 - Herpes simplex virus type 1 (short version - see also cold sores):
How common? By age 15 around 25% of UK population, by age 30 around 50%. The rates are much higher in other countries.

2. Herpes simplex virus type 2 (short version - see also our Frequently asked questions):
How common? Around 25% of the sexually active UK population. Over the whole country between 3% and 10%. The rates are much higher in other countries.
What does it cause? Often nothing, at its most obvious it causes a flu-like illness followed by blisters or ulcers on the affected skin. If it recurs, there are likely to be fewer blisters.

3. Varicella-zoster virus (short version - see also our shingles and post-herpetic neuralgia pages):
How common? Almost 100% of UK population by adulthood. However in tropical countries the rates are much lower.
How is it caught? Chickenpox is caught like flu: virus floats in the air, from the breath of an infected person.
What does it cause? A flu-like illness followed by blisters over the body. If it recurs, as shingles, the blisters will be a restricted area, often around the ribs. Older people may develop post-herpetic neuralgia, a pain the nerves that may be severe and may last for months or year. See our pages on how this is treated.

4. Epstein Barr virus (EBV, also called glandular fever, mononucleosis, mono, kissing disease):
How common? Virtually everybody worldwide.
How is it caught? Saliva.
How long before it appears (incubation period)?
What does it cause? In babies and children, the symptoms are often so mild that they are not noticed. In teenagers and adults it causes a fever, swollen glands, aching joints and it may cause ongoing fatigue. If it recurs, it will cause the same symptoms but they will not be as strong and will not last as long. People on drugs following organ transplants may suffer from ill-health caused by this virus. EBV may be in the news because it can sometimes cause a cancer called lymphoma. This cancer occurs in children with malaria in tropical countries and in adults in China.

5. Cytomegalovirus (CMV)
How common? Half the population has CMV by a young age, with higher rates of infection in poorer areas.
How is it caught? The virus is present in saliva, breast milk and other secretions.
How long before it appears (incubation period)? ... to be completed ...
What does it cause? In adults, it is usually caught with no symptoms at all. Sometimes it causes the same symptoms as a mild glandular fever (see above).

6. Human herpesvirus 6 (roseola infantum/exanthem subitum)
How common? By the age of 2, almost all babies have type 6B virus.
How is it caught? Saliva, and, in older people, possibly semen and other secretions.
How long before it appears (incubation period)? 5 to 15 days.
What does it cause? There are two types 6A and 6B. Type 6A has not been shown to cause any disease. Type 6B causes roseola in babies between 6 months and 1 year old. It is usually a mild infection, which is self-limiting. Symptoms include a fever lasting for a few days, swollen glands and normally a mild rash which appears after the fever goes. Occasionally children will have a swollen liver. Is is a major cause of fever induced seizures in babies. Since it is usually caught in childhood it is rare for adults to get this virus. If they do it is a more serious illness than in babies. HHV-6B has rarely been associated with a variety of viral illnesses, including mononucleosis syndromes, focal encephalitis, and pneumonitis.

7. Human herpesvirus 7:
How common? By the age of 3, almost all children have HHV-7.
How is it caught? Saliva, and, in older people, possibly semon and other secretions.
What does it cause? Check back later when more information on this virus has been added to the website.

8. Human herpesvirus 8 (also called Karposi's sarcoma herpes virus or KSHV) How common? This virus is quite common in some parts of the world. In Europe and the US it is not very common - under 10% have it.
Check back later when more information on this virus has been added to the website.
How is it caught?
How long before it appears (incubation period)?
What does it cause?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 19, 2007, 01:27:17 pm
I agree 100% with Bimazeck.
We can say that before hiv no virus had been really  deeply studied and there were no really drugs against any virus.
What does it means? that it is impossible for ever to find or to develope a drugs to eradicate the virus hidden in any cells?
absolutely no.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on March 19, 2007, 01:48:34 pm
This is an interesting poll. I would consider those that visit these forums to be more up on the news of HIV treatment and potential for vaccines and cures. Does it amaze anyone else that 51 of 104 respondents say that they think HIV/AIDS will be cured in the near future? I voted yes but not in the next 10 years, call me conservative I guess.

And the way the poll is constructed "near future" means in less than five years.  I think 50% of the folks who voted are being a bit rosy in their assessment, either that or they really didn't read the choices well.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on March 19, 2007, 02:01:05 pm
I agree 100% with Bimazeck.
We can say that before hiv no virus had been really  deeply studied and there were no really drugs against any virus.
What does it means? that it is impossible for ever to find or to develope a drugs to eradicate the virus hidden in any cells?
absolutely no.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that apples to oranges?  Virus vs. Retrovirus?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ivan on March 19, 2007, 06:01:23 pm
i had read all of your texts. but i think HIV can be completely cured in 5 or 10 years. or at most 15 years. i know some of you may not agree with me.

but , guys, think somethings following,

1,now there are over 40 millions HIV POZ in the world. and HIV are still spread very rapidly. with this pace , may be we will have more than 100 million"fellows" in 5 to 10 years. and the population on the earth might raise to nearly 6.5 billion. so that means more than 1.5% population on the earth are HIV+. a basement of 1.5% of HIV+ population can make any one country kaput. guys, is there a country,which want to be destroyed?

2, whether earlier or today, the biggest group of POZ people are the youths, i mean the people between 15 to 30 years old. more than 40% of POZ people are in this age. and everyday over 2 million youths will be infected. the youths are the biggest labour force group in whole world. it can lnfluence the global economy very badly and deeply. is there a government, which want his ecomony to have a big red minus number?

3, except HIV, there are so many new viren had appeared on our planet. we even didn't know how it work after we just knew them. maybe there will be one virus that can destroy our human, and worse than HIV.  we need to defeat HIV!

4, the hardest part to defeat HIV is the gene-mutation. but our scientists had just already found or begun to comletely discover the strutures of our human DNA, and it develops very quickly. and there would be endly a way to defeat HIV very soon in the future.

so, i don't think any government want his society and economy to be destroyed. and i believe we will be cured in a not very ong time.

what we need to do is just be ourselves and living happily and positive!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on March 19, 2007, 06:42:00 pm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that apples to oranges?  Virus vs. Retrovirus?

Yes.

Especially considering that the family herpesviridae are DNA viruses and their genetic codes have all the stability that that implies.

Herpes viruses also appear to have something that's called the HHV Latency Associated Transcript.  This essentially allows all bits of the herpes virus except the Latency parts to switch off when infecting humans.  Think chicken pox.  You get it... flare up with chicken pox... and this little thing is reproducing that part of its genome until some appropriate moment and then shingles!

We also, as has been pointed out, been living with herpes viruses possibly for hundreds of thousands of years, thus allowing a sort of parity through the beauties of natural selection between that particular virus family and the human immune system.

HIV, being an RNA virus, using reverse transcriptase to copy its viral RNA into DNA so our cells can make more of it.  We all know this process is somewhat akin to allowing a drunken secretary take down dictaphone messages.  There are a lot of mistakes that are going to be made.  This is what allows HIV to mutate so fucking rapidly.

It's also been infecting humans only for about 50 years... which is absolutely no time on the scale of human evolution... so yes, it's possible that within 10,000 years, HIV could have all the seriousness of a herpes outbreak... but that doesn't help any of us.

However, given HIV's inherent weirdness, even for a retrovirus, the comparison to herpesviridae isn't warranted.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jake72 on March 19, 2007, 08:46:38 pm
Not trying to put words in Bimazek's mouth, but I suspect that the point wasn't that HIV = herpes, but rather that most of us live with all sorts of critters inside us all the time.  The implication is that these bacteria, viruses, etc. don't do us much harm because our bodies keep them in check and that perhaps a therapeutic vaccine or similar approach could enable our bodies to do the same to HIV.  The existence of long-term non-progressors proves that the human body is physically capable of doing this, and the winning approach would extend this now-rare ability to most poz folk.  The other message here (echoed several times in these forums) is that even if this treatment isn't a true cure (eradication), it'd presumably be "just as good" because it'd allow us to keep HIV in check, dump our meds, not be monitored (at least not as frequently), and be able to live our lives without giving much thought to HIV. 

I'd like to say this is doable, and there's some exciting research in this area...anti-tat, dendritic cells, and so on.  It's true that HIV research has hit many snags over the years, but there have also been surprising successes.  If you'd mentioned the words "undetectable viral load" to someone, even a health care professional, 15 years ago, he/she might have laughed in your face and said "dream on."  If you'd said "immune reconstruction" or "rising t-cells," they might have spit out  the old lecture "hummankind has never faced a disease like...styming researchers...have to be realistic...back to square one." 

So while I'm not saying break out  the party hats and champagne/sparkling grape juice just yet, I do think there is good reason to have hope and to think that HAART will be surpassed by something much better-maybe not in the next couple of years, but in the not-too-distant future.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on March 19, 2007, 08:55:24 pm
The existence of long-term non-progressors proves that the human body is physically capable of doing this, and the winning approach would extend this now-rare ability to most poz folk.

I'm not sure.  I would tend to believe they are simply a genetic anomaly.  What bimazek seems to allude to is a longer term evolutionary response in human's to a virus, and like Benj/aupoint points out that takes hundreds of thousands of years to occur naturally.

However, of course LTNP are useful in and only if we can unlock their unique genetic response and bottle it.  I still think it's somewhat dangerous to make comparisons between regular viruses and a retrovirus.  HIV is the first human one, or the 2nd and therefore we have zilch experience in dealing with one.  Hence why I don't honestly believe something will happen in the next 5 years as reflected by 50% of the voting posters in the poll at the beginning of this thread.  It's simply way beyond the rosiest of scenarios that I can imagine.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on March 19, 2007, 10:37:00 pm
i agree with the two  posts two above this one supporting bimazek, me, and i disagree with   -- aupointillimite because, 9% of the entire human genome is retro viruses that somehow got lodged in our dna and dealt with over last 200 million years of evolution, so retro or not retro have been dealt with for a long time...

read these posts...

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7475.0

cd8s are the way naturally the body of all animals that get a version of hiv suppress...
for example cats, gorillas, hyenas, mycacs, etc...
if you are with a research study or a univ. or a md who is very very advanced...
print this
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7475.0
about
cd8s and ask him about it

I read that all vaccine trials done in past have to be repeated because as long as CD8s get signal (is it a protein?) to shut off and not fight off the hiv virus the vaccine will fail because of cd8s no mater how good the vaccine is...

there is a med, called

anti-pd-1 also anti-ctla which are monoclonal antibodies that if given with a vaccine or med would have totally different results...

at least that is how i read this science

or one about homing signals... do a search for homing by author bimazek

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7935.0
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: milker on March 19, 2007, 11:01:01 pm
This is annoying

RNA use and DNA replications are freaking different processes.

Milker.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 20, 2007, 02:50:48 am
it is not a problem if you think that ( rna and dna...) it's annoying.
it is important it works.
by
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 20, 2007, 01:02:21 pm
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/JVI.01396-06v1

they are looking for the eradication that means "CURE"

I believe that they are  close  to target latent hiv reservoirs ( general speaking).

A Novel Pathway for Induction of Latent Virus from Resting CD4+ T Cells in the SIV/macaque Model of HIV-1 Latency
Anding Shen*, Andrew Yang, Yan Zhou, Jean D. Boyer, Hao Zhang, Joseph B. Margolick, M. Christine Zink, Janice E. Clements, and Robert F. Siliciano
Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Pathology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Baltimore, Maryland



* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: as28@calvin.edu,


   Abstract


Although combination therapy allows suppression of HIV-1 viremia to undetectable levels, eradication has not been achieved because the virus persists in cellular reservoirs, particularly the latent reservoir in resting CD4+ T lymphocytes. We previously established an SIV/macaque model to study latency. We describe here a novel mechanism for the induction of SIV from latently infected resting CD4+ T cells. Several human cell lines including CEMx174 and EBV-transformed human B-lymphoblastoid cell lines mediated contact-dependent activation of resting macaque T cells and induction of latent SIV. Antibody blocking assays showed that interactions between the co-stimulatory molecule CD2 and its ligand, CD58, were involved whereas soluble factors and interactions between T cell receptors and major histocompatibility complex class II were not. Combinations of specific antibodies to CD2 also induced T cell activation and virus induction in human resting CD4+ T cells carrying latent HIV-1. This is the first demonstration that co-stimulatory signals can induce latent virus without co-engagement of the T cell receptor, and this study might provide insights into potential pathways to target latent HIV-1.


Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: jivemiguel1 on March 20, 2007, 08:47:06 pm
I'd like to drop a line or two, to those of you who are on this thread.  I've read all your banter, both negative and positive as to a cure.  I do have hope, but I believe that the day there is a cure, we must all prepare ourselves for the rapture, shortly there after.  Peace in the middleeast, will probably coincide with this development, and all our joy will be short lived.  Hope you all have made amends.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 21, 2007, 06:23:25 am


http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/detail/10001050.2003.html


Year Began Improvement Plan Status Comments
2004 Adopt the revised goal of extending the timeline for developing an AIDS vaccine from 2007 to 2010, to more realistically reflect the state of the science.
 Completed Completed in 2004
2005 Expand breeding of non-human primates at 3 Centers by 2005.
 Completed Long-term Goal: By 2010, develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine. Achieved: Breeding expanded to 3 Centers.
2005 Develop 3 anti-HIV compounds by 2005.
 Completed Long-term Goal: By 2007, evaluate the efficacy of 3 new treatments. Achieved: Developed 3 anti-HIV compounds.
2006 Initiate 1 new Phase IIb trial to determine if a third generation vaccine candidate has efficacy.
 Completed Long-term Goal: By 2010, develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine.
2006 Evaluate interventions to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV and assess the impact of these interventions on future treatment options for women and children.
 Completed Long-term Goal: By 2007, evaluate the efficacy of 3 new treatments.
2007 Initiate another Phase II/IIb trial(s) of the most promising third generation vaccine candidate.
 Action taken, but not completed Long-term Goal: By 2010, develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine.
2007 Achieve goal of evaluating the efficacy of three new treatment strategies for HIV infection in clinical trials in an effort to identify agents or combinations of agents that are more effective, less toxic, and/or simpler to use than the current recommended HIV treatment regimens.
 Action taken, but not completed Long-term Goal: By 2007, evaluate the efficacy of 3 new treatments.
2008 Initiate a Phase IIb trial of a promising vaccine candidate that may protect across viral clades (or subtypes).
 Action taken, but not completed 
2008 Track, monitor, and budget for trans-NIH AIDS research, utilizing the enhanced ARIS database, to more efficiently conduct portfolio analysis of 100% of expiring grants to determine reallocation of resources for priority research.
 Action taken, but not completed Efficiency Measure: By 2010, utilize enhanced ARIS database to more efficiently conduct portfolio analysis to invest in priority AIDS research

Program Performance Measures
Term Type   
Long-term/Annual Outcome Measure: By 2010, develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine. 2005 Target: Expand breeding of non-human primates at 12 Centers. 2006 Target: Initiate 1 new Phase IIb trial to determine if a third generation vaccine candidate has efficacy. 2007 Target: Continue development and evaluation of candidate vaccines.


Explanation:The development of a safe and effective vaccine against HIV is critical to worldwide efforts to control AIDS and is the best hold for halting the pandemic.

Year Target Actual
2003 vaccine strategies 4 new strategies
2004 multinat. trials 2 new multinat trial
2005 breeding 3 centers breeding 3 centers
2006 1 new Phase IIb tria Phase IIb trial
2007 add 1 Phase IIb tria On track
2008 Phase IIb trial clad On track
 
Long-term/Annual Outcome Measure: By 2007, evaluate the efficacy of 3 new treatments. 2005 Target: Develop 3 anti-HIV compounds. 2006 Target: Evaluate interventions to reduce mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV and assess the impact of these interventions on future treatment options for women and children.


Explanation:Complications are emerging from the current HAART therapy regimen so there is an urgent need for the discovery and development of new drugs that are less toxic, simpler to use, and affordable.

Year Target Actual
2003 site trng internatio completed site trng
2004 2 agents prev / tx 3 agents-HCV,CM,CNS
2005 3 anti-HIV compounds 3 anti-HIV componds
2006 Eval MTCT interven 3 studies of MTCT
2007 achieve goal On track
 
Long-term Efficiency Measure: By 2010, utilize enhanced AIDS Research Information System database to more efficiently conduct portfolio analysis to invest in priority AIDS research.


Explanation:Improve database to more efficiently conduct portfolio analysis through better tracking, monitoring, and budgeting for trans-NIH AIDS research.

Year Target Actual
2004 Init. ARIS Design Hire Contractor
2005 Convert to web-based Convert to web-based
2006 Revw expiring grants Completed
2007 Revw expiring grants 
2008 Revw expiring grants 
2009 Revw expiring grants 
2010 Revw expiring grants 
 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on March 21, 2007, 09:45:30 am
I have a tendency (call me silly) not to believe most anything from a White House press release.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: jkinatl2 on March 21, 2007, 10:13:35 am
I'd like to drop a line or two, to those of you who are on this thread.  I've read all your banter, both negative and positive as to a cure.  I do have hope, but I believe that the day there is a cure, we must all prepare ourselves for the rapture, shortly there after.  Peace in the middleeast, will probably coincide with this development, and all our joy will be short lived.  Hope you all have made amends.


Finally, a perspective we can all agree with.
Discomfort to Zion! Eat the rich!

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: SASA39 on March 21, 2007, 01:00:30 pm
I doubt .
Because of the following :
1.The prevalent opppinion is that " nowadays medicine keep our illness under tolerable control " and that "HIV/AIDS has become a  light chronicall illness ".
I think that these opinions are launched by big pharmaceuticals .
They do not wanna find vaccine or a true medicine until they spent all their old medicine supplies.
2.A virus is hidden in a place  ( brain and nerve cells ) which are unreachable to a modern medicine

I think that our only hope is a vaccine of somekind and that it would be found by small companies ( with a lot of luck to pass big predator companies )

it is a well known story that there were a few people who has found a really
revolutionary things like washing machine which use no w.powder and a  long life airplane tyres ..................Guess what happened next.......They were visited by the big companies representatives and offered a blank check to put their innovations into a ground.
                                                     Al
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on March 21, 2007, 01:27:02 pm
I have a tendency (call me silly) not to believe most anything from a White House press release.

Oh yeah.  I'm with you on this.

Our Dear President Shrub is so into science it's sort of scary.

I suppose this argument on "is this gonna be cured anytime soon" is going to be like something of a tennis match.

Although I hope I'm too mature to resist putting an "I told you so" card on the graves of people who die from AIDS in the next five to ten years.

I'm not trying to be funny, by the by.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 21, 2007, 01:27:42 pm
I dont agree with sas 39 absolutely.

The business regard the "cure" will be a huge business ( vaccine or drugs... i dont care)
The big pharma like so much the money eh eh.even the small company loves the money.
The hiv virus is not hidden in the brain cells.. is hidden in the macrophagy in the blood inside the brain... it is different.

by
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: maddie on March 22, 2007, 06:18:12 pm

When we were children we dreamed wonderful things, believed in Fairies and Father Christmas and the magic and the miracles.
Let us believe that Yes there will be a cure that can make life easier, a life that is longer than we initailly thought, that life is worth living. that we love life. and that we love our lives, and that we love others who love us.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 23, 2007, 04:02:11 am
HIV initially enters the brain by passage of HIV-infected cells from the blood.

 Since HIV does not infect neurons, it is unlikely that direct viral replication within these cells accounts for their loss. However, viral proteins may play a part in neuronal cytotoxicity since gp120 and Tat protein have been shown to be toxic for neurons in culture (for review, see Geleziunas et al. 1992; Levy 1993). The effects of gp120 on neuronal cell growth might be due to its ability to bind to receptors for neuronal growth factors, since some sequence similarity exists between a portion of gp120 and both neuroleukin and vasoactive intestinal peptide. The significance of these similarities awaits experimental testing.

Nerve cells are not directly infected by HIV, suggesting that nerve cell death is a response to toxic factors released from the virus itself or by neighboring cells. Several potential candidates for the AIDS dementia neurotoxin(s) have been identified, but it remains uncertain which factor is the true culprit.

herpes retrovirus infect nerve cells... it is much different than hiv retrovirus.

The biggest problem is to flusghing out or activate the  very very small number of resting cd4.

The scientisti know so much about the latency, that it is not possible to believe they can not eradicate a small number of  infected cd4.

Biotron compound  BIT 225 is one of them.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 23, 2007, 07:15:27 am
I'm not sure why this thread went all Herpes for a while. None of these viruses have much similarity with HIV. I understand the point made about us all have bugs inside us that we suppress, as some species of monkeys do with SIV, but the monkeys took a while to evolve to that point and I don't fancy waiting. Some species of monkey are still badly affected by SIV.

The fact remains that there are, to my knowledge, no treatments currently being trialled as a prospective cure for HIV. This means more than 5 years until a possible cure at least, no matter how good the basic science looks. There are some promising approaches that have been tried in mice and in cell culture, but it takes 5-10 years to get this stuff anywhere near a patient. And so far, basic science cannot figure out a way to sort out latency or viral reservoirs.

For me, controlling HIV in the blood even w/o meds isn't cure. Cure is eradication.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 24, 2007, 09:30:08 am
ok  "cure" is a complete eradication of hidden hiv.

What do you call a complete control of viremia  a normal level of cd4 no side effects?  ..

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jake72 on March 24, 2007, 10:52:44 am
ok  "cure" is a complete eradication of hidden hiv.

What do you call a complete control of viremia  a normal level of cd4 no side effects?  ..



Permanent remission?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on March 24, 2007, 01:25:54 pm
I dunno - "functional cure", "carrier"? Open to suggestions...

Can't find anything in my dictionary that would fit. Maybe being "HIV positive" would become as innocuous as being HBV positive once a functional cure was developed...
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: HIVworker on March 26, 2007, 12:13:36 am
The term you are looking for is "Sustained Virological Response" meaning the virus doesn't come back off meds ever. There will always be the guts of inactive HIV in the blood and HIV antibodies. But the body would have no active HIV. That's as good as it would get.

R
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: thunter34 on March 26, 2007, 12:27:01 am
The term you are looking for is "Sustained Virological Response" meaning the virus doesn't come back off meds ever. There will always be the guts of inactive HIV in the blood and HIV antibodies. But the body would have no active HIV. That's as good as it would get.

R

Well, that sounds pretty dang good to me.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 26, 2007, 04:33:56 am
http://www.tibotec-hiv.com/medline/details.jhtml?id=17151130&product=none

Tibotec - HIV - Pubmed Search
Novel pathway for induction of latent virus from resting CD4(+) T cells in the simian immunodeficiency virus/macaque model of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 latency.
Publish date:  Feb 2007.
Author(s): Shen A, Yang HC, Zhou Y, Chase AJ, Boyer JD, Zhang H, Margolick JB, Zink MC, Clements JE, Siliciano RF
J Virol;  Pages: 1660-70;  Volume(Issue): 81(4)

Although combination therapy allows the suppression of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) viremia to undetectable levels, eradication has not been achieved because the virus persists in cellular reservoirs, particularly the latent reservoir in resting CD4(+) T lymphocytes. We previously established a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)/macaque model to study latency. We describe here a novel mechanism for the induction of SIV from latently infected resting CD4(+) T cells. Several human cell lines including CEMx174 and Epstein-Barr virus-transformed human B-lymphoblastoid cell lines mediated contact-dependent activation of resting macaque T cells and induction of latent SIV. Antibody-blocking assays showed that interactions between the costimulatory molecule CD2 and its ligand CD58 were involved, whereas soluble factors and interactions between T-cell receptors and major histocompatibility complex class II were not. Combinations of specific antibodies to CD2 also induced T-cell activation and virus induction in human resting CD4(+) T cells carrying latent HIV-1. This is the first demonstration that costimulatory signals can induce latent virus without the coengagement of the T-cell receptor, and this study might provide insights into potential pathways to target latent HIV-1.

Email: as28@calvin.edu

StpC-based gene therapy targeting latent reservoirs of HIV-1.
Publish date:  Dec 2006.
Author(s): Turner LS, Tsygankov AY, Henderson EE
Antiviral Res;  Pages: 233-41;  Volume(Issue): 72(3)

The ability of HIV-1 to form latent reservoirs presents a major obstacle to eradication. One approach to elimination of the latent reservoir is induction therapy, whereby cells harboring latent virus are activated and therefore initiate virus replication. We have constructed a lentiviral vector encoding Herpesvirus saimiri subgroup C saimiri transformation-associated protein (StpC), which has been shown to modulate HIV-1 replication, under the control of a cytomegalovirus promoter in order to determine the ability of StpC to upregulate latent HIV-1. We have included a suicide gene, herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (TK), under the control of the HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR) promoter. We hypothesized that upon StpC expression in latently infected cells induction of virus replication and subsequent production of viral transactivators of the LTR will activate expression of the tk gene, sensitizing the cells to the nucleoside analogue ganciclovir (GCV). Transduction of the latently infected cell line J1.1 resulted in increased virus replication. In the presence of GCV transduced cells exhibited decreased HIV-1 replication, inhibition of cell proliferation, and increased apoptosis. This prototype vector serves as a proof of concept of the utility of gene-based induction agents and suicide genes as a new method for targeting reservoirs of latent HIV-1.

Email: lsturner@temple.edu


A unified concept of HIV latency.
Publish date:  Nov 2006.
Author(s): Bagasra O
Expert Opin Biol Ther;  Pages: 1135-49;  Volume(Issue): 6(11)

The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) combining potent drugs that can inhibit reverse transcriptase, integrase and protease activities has changed the natural history of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 disease. Unfortunately, poor penetrability into different anatomic compartments, toxicity and drug resistance are some of the problems related to their prolonged use. The ability of HIV to mutate and become resistant, along with the ongoing viral replication during HAART, can lead to the emergence of independently evolving viral strains in different anatomic compartments (i.e., brain, testes, lymph nodes, etc.). In addition, HAART predominantly effects the viral replication in the activated or differentiating CD(+) T lymphocytes, but appears to have a very limited effect on HIV-1 preintegration complexes in the latently infected cells. Existing drug therapies do not eliminate these viral reservoirs, nor do they prevent their formation. New strategies are needed for eliminating protected areas of HIV-1 in vivo. Therefore, the persistence of latent HIV-1 reservoirs is the principal barrier in the complete eradication of HIV-1 infection in patients by antiretroviral therapy at present. African non-human primates (NHPs) naturally infected with various simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) appear not to develop immunodeficiency or AIDS, whereas Asian NHPs, which are unnatural hosts, infected with SIVs, as well humans infected with HIV-1, will nearly always develop progressive loss of CD(+) T lymphocytes and a gradual destruction of immune functions. Understanding the difference in the host responses between natural and unnatural hosts, and deciphering which host factors are responsible for the non-pathogenic course of natural SIV infections, would be valuable in developing more-effective treatment or prevention strategies for HIV/AIDS. A number of factors encoded by host cells have been identified that appear to play critical roles in the SIV infection process. Two of these factors, TRIM5alpha (a member of a large family of proteins known as the TRIM proteins) and cellular apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing enzyme-catalytic polypeptide-like-3G (APOBEC3G) have been recently identified. APOBEC3G genes belong to a family of primate genes that produce enzymes (in this case, APOBEC3G) that 'edit' RNA by replacing cytosine with guanine into viral particles as the virus undergoes reverse transcription in the cytoplasm of the host cell. HIV-1, in turn, counters with a protein called viral infectivity factor (Vif), which binds to the APOBEC3G enzyme that degrades it. Several other blocking factors have been described, including lentiviral blocking factor (Lv)1 and 2. These factors appear to block the infection at a postentry step; after reverse transcription has occurred, but before proviral integration. Thus, it is crucial to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in the establishment, maintenance and reactivation of lentiviral latency. This review presents various models of HIV-1 latency and forward a new unified model of lentiviral latency.

Email: obagasra@claflin.edu


HAART-persistent HIV-1 latent reservoirs: their origin, mechanisms of stability and potential strategies for eradication.
Publish date:  Apr 2006.
Author(s): Kulkosky J, Bray S
Curr HIV Res;  Pages: 199-208;  Volume(Issue): 4(2)

HIV-1 infection persists despite long-term administration of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). The mechanism of this persistence appears to result primarily from viral infection of CD4+ T-lymphocytes that have the ability to duplicate and revert into a quiescent state. These infected resting cells are long-lived and evade immune surveillance or clearance. The inability to eradicate this class of cells, bearing the viral DNA, suggests life-long persistence of virus in HIV-1-infected individuals, even if HAART were administered for decades. This review discusses the origins and mechanisms accounting for stability of these latent HIV-1 cellular reservoirs. It further provides an overview of recent clinical trials aimed at their eradication. There have been a limited number of immune activation (IAT) trials directed at HAART-persistent, viral reservoir eradication. These trials have not resulted in purging of these highly stable viral reservoirs though results from such efforts suggest partial effects. The properties of novel compounds that might be included into IAT eradication protocols are continuing to be evaluated and their potential for inclusion into future IAT trials will be discussed.

Email: kulkoskyj@chc.edu

NF-kappaB p50 promotes HIV latency through HDAC recruitment and repression of transcriptional initiation.
Publish date: 11 Jan 2006.
Author(s): Williams SA, Chen LF, Kwon H, Ruiz-Jarabo CM, Verdin E, Greene WC
EMBO J;  Pages: 139-49;  Volume(Issue): 25(1)

Cells latently infected with HIV represent a currently insurmountable barrier to viral eradication in infected patients. Using the J-Lat human T-cell model of HIV latency, we have investigated the role of host factor binding to the kappaB enhancer elements of the HIV long terminal repeat (LTR) in the maintenance of viral latency. We show that NF-kappaB p50-HDAC1 complexes constitutively bind the latent HIV LTR and induce histone deacetylation and repressive changes in chromatin structure of the HIV LTR, changes that impair recruitment of RNA polymerase II and transcriptional initiation. Knockdown of p50 expression with specific small hairpin RNAs reduces HDAC1 binding to the latent HIV LTR and induces RNA polymerase II recruitment. Similarly, inhibition of histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity with trichostatin A promotes binding of RNA polymerase II to the latent HIV LTR. This bound polymerase complex, however, remains non-processive, generating only short viral transcripts. Synthesis of full-length viral transcripts can be rescued under these conditions by expression of Tat. The combination of HDAC inhibitors and Tat merits consideration as a new strategy for purging latent HIV proviruses from their cellular reservoirs.


Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 26, 2007, 04:43:23 am
clearance of infected virus cells

Why G3139 works poorly in cancer trials but might work well against HIV.
Publish date: 13 Mar 2007.
Author(s): Parris GE
Med Hypotheses;  Pages: ; 

The antisense drug G3139 (oblimersen sodium, Genta, Inc.) is a phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) containing unmethylated CpG units, which is targeted to suppress Bcl-2. To date, its effectiveness in cancer clinical trials has been minimal. Some suggestions are provided for that disappointment and recent citations are provided that support the idea that G3139 may be effective at clearing viral infections, specifically HIV. At the time G3139 was conceived as an anti-cancer drug candidate, it was viewed optimistically because Bcl-2 was widely believed to be the most important protein blocking p53-dependent apoptosis caused by internal stress. Since that time, we have learnt that Bcl-2 is not the only protein that inhibits apoptosis and that p53 itself is frequently malfunctioning in tumors. Thus, the anti-cancer utility of suppressing Bcl-2 in cancer cells is limited. Moreover, Bcl-2 has a role in halting the cell cycle (though p27), which may slow down tumor growth; and Bcl-2 even has pro-apoptotic roles in the execution of apoptosis initiated by external death signals (via Fas/CD95 and caspase 3). Overall, in the clinical setting, G3139 usually has statistically significant but medically unimportant benefit. These results have greatly diminished the enthusiasm for the drug especially when the side effects are considered. Specifically, the unmethylated CpG ODN (and/or the phosphorothioate group) activates the immune system, but this potentially important anti-cancer effect is lost when the immune cells undergo premature apoptosis apparently because their Bcl-2 levels have been lowered by the antisense effect of G3139. While this effect on immune cells is usually undesirable, it is exactly what would be useful for activating immune cells, initiating provirus transcription in retrovirus-infected cells, and facilitating selective apoptosis of these infected cells. In general, G3139 might have benefit in clearing chronic infections by intracellular parasites including viruses (HIV, SIV, HTLV, HBV, coronavirus, etc.). Indeed, G3139 has been shown to cause apoptosis in EBV-infected cells leading to clearance of the virus.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on March 26, 2007, 05:16:21 am
Many scientists and docs are working on latent hiv reservoirs.

ONLY 1 CD4 CELL IN 10.000.000 CD4 CELLS IS WITH LATENT HIV INTEGRATED OR UNINTEGRATED.

and the ongoing viremia at very very very low levell replace the reservoirs and reset the decay of the latency.

integrase and entry inhibitors can reduce the viremia at zero without no ongoing viremia in the body.



Herpesvirus saimiri terminal membrane proteins modulate HIV-1 replication by altering Nef and Tat functions.
Publish date:  Jan 2007.
Author(s): Raymond AD, Hasham M, Tsygankov AY, Henderson EE
Curr HIV Res;  Pages: 79-86;  Volume(Issue): 5(1)

Herpesvirus saimiri (HVS)-transformed human T cells expressing terminal membrane proteins (TMPs) tyrosine kinase interacting protein (Tip) and saimiri transformation associated protein strain C (StpC) are highly permissive for R5 and X4 strains of HIV-1. StpC expression enhances replication of R5 and X4 strains of HIV-1 and induces latent reservoirs of replication competent HIV-1 in cell lines derived from T cells or monocytes. Paradoxically Tip expression restricts replication and cytopathic effects of R5 and X4 strains of HIV-1 in T cells and monocytes post-retrotransposition. Understanding the canonical pathways whereby Tip and StpC alter HIV-1 replication may uncover novel therapeutic approaches to HIV-1 infection. Here we show Tip inhibits Tat-mediated transcriptional activation of the long terminal repeat (LTR). Tip mediated inhibition of Tat transactivation is reversed by Nef. Tip also mediates restriction of late-stage replication of HIV-1 by disrupting Nef interaction with lymphocyte-specific protein-tyrosine kinase (Lck) in lipid rafts. Specifically, in the presence of Tip, Lck does not localize to lipid rafts reducing Nef interaction with Lck within the lipid rafts. Finally, the permissive phenotype conferred by StpC is the result of synergy with Tat during transcriptional activation of the HIV-1 LTR. This transcriptional synergy between StpC and Tat requires Lck and NF-kappaB consensus binding sequences. These findings demonstrate that the HVS TMPs influence transcriptional and post-transcriptional stages in HIV-1 replication. We propose that HVS-encoded TMPs associated with T cell transformation have evolved ability to modulate the replication of competing retroviruses. Gene based approaches utilizing Tip and StpC may provide therapeutic models for treating acute and latent HIV-1 infections, respectively.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: pagnoco on April 03, 2007, 09:40:32 am
Inovio Biomedical’s DNA Delivery Technology Significantly Enhances Potency of HIV DNA Vaccine
Companies mentioned in this article:
Vical 
 
3/26/2007 @ 8:55 AM   print this article - email to a friend - join our eNewsletter 
 
Inovio Biomedical Corp. (AMEX:INO), which is focused on the development of DNA vaccines and a novel solid tumor ablation therapy, announced today that the Journal of Virology has published a scientific paper prepared by Inovio’s development partner, Wyeth, regarding results from a non-human primate study of an investigational DNA vaccine against HIV delivered using Inovio Biomedical’s electroporation technology. The paper, titled “Effect of plasmid DNA vaccine design and in vivo electroporation on the resulting vaccine-specific immune responses in rhesus macaques,” summarized results of a research project lead by Michael A. Egan, Ph.D., a principle research scientist at Wyeth Vaccine Research. The scientific paper concluded: “These results indicate that in vivo electroporation appears safe and can dramatically improve the delivery and immunogenicity of a multi-vector, multi-antigen pDNA vaccine in non-human primates. Collectively, these data have important implications for the design and development of an efficacious therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of HIV-1 infection.”
   
   Key observations of the study included:
   
   * Vaccination in combination with in vivo electroporation led to a more rapid onset and enhanced vaccine-specific immune responses.
   
   * This increase in CMI [cell-mediated immune] responses translates to an apparent 50-200-fold [8 weeks and 22 weeks, respectively] increase in pDNA [plasmid DNA] vaccine potency.
   
   * Importantly, in vivo electroporation enhanced the immune responseagainst the less immunogenic antigens, resulting in a more balanced immune response.
   
   * In addition, in vivo electroporation resulted in an approximate 2.5 log10 increase in antibody responses.
   
   “Wyeth’s non-human primate data demonstrated a significant increase in both the breadth and magnitude of the cellular immune responseto selected HIV antigens. This is the type of response that virologists have been seeking for many years,” stated Avtar Dhillon, MD, president and CEO of Inovio. “While these data will need to be reproduced in human clinical trials, the significant enhancement in potency observed to date reaffirms our position that electroporation is a key enabling technology for DNA vaccines.”
   
   Inovio’s collaboration and non-exclusive license agreement with Wyeth was announced in November 2006.
   
   About Inovio’s DNA Delivery Technology
   
   DNA vaccines have the potential to by-pass scientific obstacles inherent in the development of conventional vaccines. For example, DNA vaccines may be better in stimulating cellular immunity necessary to fight chronic infection or diseases such as cancer. Despite this promise, vaccination using DNA plasmid alone without enhanced delivery has not been shown to reach the threshold for clinical benefit.
   
   Intramuscular delivery of DNA vaccines using Inovio’s proprietary electroporation technology has been shown in primate studies to boost the immune responseby orders of magnitude over DNA plasmid alone. Plasmid-based vaccines induced higher levels of antibodies and T-cell responses when delivered via electroporation, suggesting the potential to provide better protection from infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.
   
   About Inovio Biomedical Corporation
   
   Inovio Biomedical Corporation is focused on commercializing its Selective Electrochemical Tumor Ablation (SECTA) therapy and development of multiple DNA vaccines using its delivery platform for gene-based treatments. SECTA is a local ablation therapy for solid tumors that is designed to selectively kill cancerous cells and minimize cosmetic or functional impacts to predominantly healthy tissue typically treated around the tumor. Inovio is moving its lead product, the MedPulser®, through pre-marketing studies for head and neck cancer and skin cancers in Europe, where it has CE Mark accreditation, a U.S. phase III pivotal study for head and neck cancer, and a phase I/II trial for breast cancer. Inovio’s DNA delivery partners include Merck, Wyeth, Vical, University of Southampton, Moffitt Cancer Center, and the U.S. Army, with four gene-based therapies and DNA vaccines in phase I clinical studies. Inovio is a leader in developing human therapeutic applications of electroporation, which uses brief, controlled electrical pulses to dramatically increase cellular uptake of a useful biopharmaceutical, with the industry's most extensive patent portfolio covering in vivo electroporation. More information is available at www.inovio.com. 

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on April 05, 2007, 07:21:43 pm

The point of the herpes discussion is exactly that, the body can and does suppress all kind of viruses naturally, and it DOES NOT TAKE MILLIONS of years to evolve the ability.  There are thousands of LTNP, long term non progressors, also Elite controllers, these LTNP have been poz for 20 30 years or more and the body-- their human body NATURALLY suppresses the virus... they have close to or undetectable and no meds ever, no matter that virus is retro or not, their bodies their human body today NATURALLY suppresses the virus...

why

science just found out april 2, 2007 in china... see my post here.. chinese found that it is CD8 cells and pd-1

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10786.0

 i posted all the science of the CD8 cells and pd-1 here
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7475.0

now the trick is finding a vaccine or med or gene therapy that stimulates or immune modulates the CD8s like LTNP --

these studies are being done on mice and rats every day now as we speak

the problem is
that

the researches need much much more money

the powerful want war, cause they make money off of war, look how well texas economy halliburton does with war, the st8t men love war they are not creative, they are distructive, they do not understand creativity

anything feminine or creative is distained or put down in our society, look the women now in usa act like men, i never in my life thought i would see 90 women kick boxing and punching for an hour at the gym... we are in a hyper macho violent viscious culture go to any culture where men are sensitive, kind gentle

st8t men want war and violence because of fear and anger

we need war on hiv, probably 10x more money on research to get this out fast

we need activism and talking to congressman and senate about more money for research

do not worry about the retro thing.. that is just a blip that made it hard to create meds that do not get mutated around, i know if you are one that has a mutated version then that is not easy to hear but

retro or not, the body today completely represses the virus in many individuals, i have personally met 7 of these guys...

the solution is in

vaccines, gene therapy, CD8 stimulation,

i personally feel the "cure" is already found in one of these recent in last 24 month discoveries but it will take time to fully create the treatment that works...

for example read any of these posts, one or two of these or 3 together

or something that will be discovered out of one of these or something found in last few years (these mostly focus on discoveries in last 18 months)

will be effective

what we need to do now is get as much money to researchers as possible... asap

especially now that the chinese just proved that LTNP have this special CD8 cell  http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10786.0

 immune modulation strategies in cancer...  applied to hiv
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10782.0
 
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10789.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7475.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7907.0
 
fas
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7935.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8412.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8478.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8475.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8415.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7708.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7707.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7701.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7476.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8478.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8412.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8773.0
 
 
 
i read thru all 1000 articles from the CROI and found these interesting
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10790.0
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10542.0
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10792.0
 
 
 
 
Sjogren’s syndrome or DILS Anyone had these Diseases? Please post
I found a pd-1 connection to this LTNP connection
 
 
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7708.0
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8215.0
 
 
gene therapy by gensys
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=7476.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8475.0
 
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10626.0
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8417.0
 
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=9202.msg112004#msg112004
 
 
 
 
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8708.0
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8840.0
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=8568.0
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=10143.msg125074#msg125074
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=1283.msg93474#msg93474


Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: macholicious on April 11, 2007, 11:40:02 am
10 years perhaps?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on April 12, 2007, 03:44:04 am


http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=98399&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=552255&highlight=


Cell Genesys Reports Encouraging Interim Phase II Data For AIDS Gene Therapy
Novel Immune-Based Therapy Targets HIV Reservoirs

GENEVA, Switzerland, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Cell Genesys, Inc. (Nasdaq: CEGE) today announced that the trend in initial Phase II data for the company's AIDS gene therapy shows decreased levels of HIV in gastrointestinal lymphoid tissue in four out of five patients tested for virus harbored by this tissue and in whom antiviral drugs failed to eradicate HIV in the blood. Data also show that the genetically modified immune cells employed in this therapy survive for at least 100 days following infusion, consistent with HIV-specific T cell proliferation, and can traffic to lymphoid tissue in the gastrointestinal tract. Cell Genesys' AIDS gene therapy involves genetically engineered T cells that can target and eliminate residual virus in HIV- infected cells that remain as reservoirs for future infection even after treatment with the best available antiviral drugs.

The company and its collaborators at the University of Los Angeles AIDS Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported these findings at the Second International Workshop on HIV Drug Resistance and Treatment Strategies in Italy and the Twelfth World AIDS Conference in Switzerland. The company expects to report further results related to its AIDS gene therapy trials during the next six months.

"Cell Genesys' AIDS gene therapy could address the remaining obstacle in the treatment of HIV infection by targeting and destroying the cells still harboring the virus," said Dale G. Ando, M.D., vice president, clinical research of Cell Genesys. "Now that replication of the virus in the blood can be controlled by antiviral drugs in most patients, an immune-based therapy to eliminate remaining reservoirs of HIV-infected cells which exist in all patients represents a potential strategy for HIV eradication."

Findings Reported For Initial Trials Testing Patients With Detectable HIV

Cell Genesys' initial clinical trials have been conducted in over 60 patients who have failed antiviral drug therapy and still have detectable levels of virus in their blood. In addition to the trend in early findings showing a decrease in virus in tissue, the company also has reported persistence of clinically relevant levels of the genetically modified T cells in the blood for at least 100 days consistent with HIV-specific T cell proliferation, an increase in CD4 T cell counts in the majority of patients, trafficking of the modified T cells to the lymphoid tissues and evidence suggestive of antiviral activity in blood in some patients.

Based on these encouraging preliminary results, Cell Genesys is now conducting a second Phase II trial testing its AIDS gene therapy in patients in whom the virus is not detectable in the blood, following treatment with antiviral drugs. These patients comprise the majority of AIDS patients and are believed to be good candidates for such an immune-based gene therapy since viral replication is controlled.

Second Phase II Trial Tests Patients In Whom HIV

Is Not Detectable in Blood

The new Phase II trial now under way is testing the company's gene therapy in approximately 40 patients in whom HIV can not be detected in blood following antiviral drug treatment. Patients will receive three infusions of the company's AIDS gene therapy and will be followed for at least six months. The endpoints for this trial include reduction of HIV-infected cells in blood and lymphoid tissues. To date, approximately 30 patients have been enrolled in this trial.

New Endpoint Targets Reduction of HIV In Tissue For Second Phase II Trial

In addition to measuring changes to viral load in the blood in this second Phase II trial, tissue viral burden will be monitored through biopsies of lymphoid tissue from the gastrointestinal tract, which is a hiding place for HIV-infected cells. This new procedure for detecting virus in tissue has been developed by the company's collaborator, Dr. Peter Anton, at the University of California, Los Angeles AIDS Institute. The procedure could be particularly useful in measuring the impact of Cell Genesys' AIDS gene therapy in patients whose plasma virus is already controlled below detectable levels by combination drug treatment. The gastrointestinal tract contains the largest, most readily accessible and renewable source of the body's immune system cells. Rectal biopsies are an easy, fast and safe technique to measure viral burden in lymphoid tissue. Additional tests will include proviral DNA measurements in blood by PCR, an ultra sensitive HIV viral culture assay and CD4 cell counts.

Gene Therapy Technology Arms Immune Cells With Novel Targeting Mechanism

The company's T cell gene therapy involves a proprietary method of genetically engineering CD4 (helper) and CD8 (killer) T cells to express novel receptors enabling the cells to target and destroy malignant or virally infected cells. The company's AIDS gene therapy employs T cells that have been modified with a proprietary gene to seek out gp120, a cell surface protein expressed by HIV-infected cells. The engineered T cells can thereby eliminate HIV-infected cells while bypassing the normal immune system recognition process required to activate these immune cells against disease cells. During the natural course of HIV infection, normal CD4 T cells are destroyed which disables a patient's ability to mount an effective immune response to the virus. Cell Genesys' AIDS gene therapy could be viewed as "replacement therapy" utilizing these engineered T cells to enhance immune function.

Gene Therapy Targets and Eliminates Infected Cells As

Efficiently As Healthy T Cells

In other published research findings, the company has reported that its "programmed" T cells target and kill infected cells as efficiently and early as naturally occurring HIV-specific T cells, which are lost during the early stages of HIV infection. In addition, the modified cells kill both T cells and macrophages which are the primary reservoirs of HIV infection in the body. Recent studies have shown that all patients still harbor quiescent reservoirs of HIV-infected cells even after years of combination antiviral drug treatment. The company's published work also reported that these modified T cells are able to target and kill diverse mutated strains of HIV. Naturally occurring HIV-specific T cells are often not able to recognize HIV-infected cells due to rapid mutation of the virus and therefore the patient's normal immune system is disabled.

Cell Genesys Profile

Cell Genesys is focused on the development and commercialization of ex vivo and in vivo gene therapies to treat major, life-threatening diseases and disorders. The company's AIDS gene therapy is in Phase II human clinical testing supported by funding from its collaborator, Hoechst Marion Roussel. In addition, the company is also conducting Phase I/II human clinical trials for its T cell gene therapy in colon cancer and for its GVAX(TM) cancer vaccine in lung, melanoma and prostate cancer. The company also is conducting preclinical studies in other cancer indications, hemophilia, cardiovascular disease and neurologic disorders. Cell Genesys' assets outside gene therapy include its Abgenix subsidiary for antibody products and the company's licensing program in gene activation technology.

Statements made herein, other than statements of historical fact, including statements about the company's and its subsidiary's progress of clinical trials, the success of the company's clinical trials and therapies, the expected timing of future trial results, the expected success of the company's therapies with specific patient candidate groups, the expected efficacy and safety of the company's therapies and the ability of the company's therapies to achieve certain clinical objectives are forward-looking statements and are subject to a number of uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made, including risks associated with the success of research and development programs, the results achieved in ongoing clinical trials, the regulatory approval process, competitive technologies and products, patents, corporate partnerships and additional financings. For information about these and other risks which may affect Cell Genesys, please see the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 31, 1998 as well as Cell Genesys' reports on Form 10-Q and 8-K and other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
SOURCE Cell Genesys, Inc.
Web site: http: //www.cellgenesys.com
Company News On-Call: http: //www.prnewswire.com or fax, 800-758-5804, ext. 134113
CONTACT: Kathleen Sereda Glaub, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Cell Genesys, Inc., 650-425-4542, or E-mail: ir@cellgenesys.com
 
 
 
 
 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 12, 2007, 12:26:07 pm
Way to kill a thread fellas - cut and paste. Nobody reads it, and it's lazy. It's like an information avalanche. I bet YOU haven't even read this stuff - otherwise you'd have an opinion to offer.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on April 12, 2007, 01:28:10 pm
DAT'S SUM DELICIOUS COPYPASTA
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on April 12, 2007, 01:35:36 pm
Word.

tl;dr
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on April 12, 2007, 02:06:49 pm
It's odd that it's a lot of newly registered people doing the same thing, isn't it?  It's like some sort of bot.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: aupointillimite on April 12, 2007, 02:07:50 pm
It's odd that it's a lot of newly registered people doing the same thing, isn't it?  It's like some sort of bot.

Some sort of Pollyanna bot.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on April 12, 2007, 02:08:55 pm
Whatever it is it's almost like a retrovirus!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 12, 2007, 02:16:27 pm
It's almost like they're scared that the posters in this thread might express an opinion they find too scarey, so they pre-emptively deluge it with fantastic news feeds cut and pasted that support their point of view. Maybe. I don't read them.

I've written to Andy to ask whether this forum can have a stickie at the top with posting guidelines that would prevent this. We can then report the couple of people who don't seem to be taking the hint.

M.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on April 12, 2007, 02:23:31 pm
Matt, there was an entire thread (or two) where it was requested repeatedly that people simply extract what they find relevant, and provide a link.

I'd further it by stating they should lead off with some sort of discussion blurb but I'm sure that would be asking too much.  At some point it all just blurs anyway and is simply incredibly counter productive, which you'd think the "usual suspects" would pick up on when nobody is discussing anything in these numerous copypasta threads.

You know, it's like when a guy repeatedly hits on you in a bar that you've not given the time of day to since you've been in there, and then you drop repeated hints for him to scuttle off and he still keeps it all up.  At some point you either have to become mean or just leave the bar running.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 12, 2007, 02:26:44 pm
Yes, I remember - I contributed to some of those threads, making exactly that request, like a few other people.

I suppose a discussion blurb might involve some actual thought on their part, to y'know, formulate an opinon. I've started skipping these peoples' posts, but it bugs me how it can just kill a thread sometimes. The threads that start with a c 'n' p sink like a stone, you're right.

I think it's more like a guy hitting you WITH a bar!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on April 12, 2007, 02:29:19 pm
I agree though, this forum section needs a stickie "Welcome" thread where they lay out some sort of rule so that this sort of copypasta tyranny stops.  I would participate more if it did... as it is now I click on things and when I see endless text I hit "back"
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 12, 2007, 04:18:56 pm
Totally. Anyway, Andy's just PM'd me and said that we will get our sticky in this forum. So now we can report people who c 'n' p.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bimazek on April 15, 2007, 03:58:15 pm

I prefer fact and information post no matter how long, to endless chat posts that do nothing but stroke and express the ego of the poster, especially in research news and studies, no one needs to hear about how someone felt about brushing thier teeth this morning.

If a post it too long for a person, just skim it

skimming is a reading technique taught in schools in elementary school, if a part interests you then read it

Research News and Studies should not be a chat forum

it is science related, and science is complicated and takes more words than chit chat

there is so much miss information in the hiv education esp., the gay hiv education area ... we are spending millions to teach fear and aparthied of poz people to everyone

any facts and truth will help

why is there not more activism now

i have seen terrible face shape changes and body shape changes in my friends who just started haart 12 months ago

someday looking back this will all be taught in med schools as yes a giant success of medicine (saving prolonging lives) but also one of the biggest failures of medicine and embarrassments

imagine if all the men who go treated for legionaaires disease had body shape changes... or people who took diabettees drugs

 Research News and Studies needs long posts to get the point across

perhaps new people have energy and hope and want to search for latest new thing

cure

even

THERE WOULD BE A CURE TODAY IF BUSH HAD NOT STOLLEN TWO ELECTIONS AND SPENT ALL THE MONEY ON IRAQ I GUARENTEE

THE WAR WASTED MONEY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN USED FOR STEM CELL... CURING MANY DISEASES

the recent break thru by the chinese proves how far behind we are getting

they showed that all LTNP --- well its because they have hiv specific CD8 killer cells that do not get switched off

this is a huge breakthru



Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: hahaha on April 15, 2007, 10:24:37 pm
If a post it too long for a person, just skim it

skimming is a reading technique taught in schools in elementary school, if a part interests you then read it

Research News and Studies should not be a chat forum

it is science related, and science is complicated and takes more words than chit chat

there is so much miss information in the hiv education esp., the gay hiv education area ... we are spending millions to teach fear and aparthied of poz people to everyone

any facts and truth will help

THERE WOULD BE A CURE TODAY IF BUSH HAD NOT STOLLEN TWO ELECTIONS AND SPENT ALL THE MONEY ON IRAQ I GUARENTEE
THE WAR WASTED MONEY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN USED FOR STEM CELL... CURING MANY DISEASES


I totally agree with bimazek.  Learning is not an easy thing, a full explanation is needed.   If you jump to the conclusion too quickly, you may be mislead or fail to see the non-logical part of such report. 

As a "new research" forum, there shall have more discussion between the lines.....
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 16, 2007, 07:40:57 am
That's not what people are saying.

Nobody wants to turn this into a "chat forum", but people who participate here want to make sure that there is a clear discussion, that is reasonably easy to follow. Science doesn't have to be complicated. I say that as somebody trained in biomedical science.

What seems to be happening is huge posts are being copied and pasted from the internet and then transplanted here with no apparent reasoning. Very often they have nothing to do with the thread being discussed, as you can see from the big posts on this thread about vaccines, when we're talking about cure. The people posting these huge entries don't say why they think they're important, or where they think the research will go. Everybody knows that massive amounts of research are going on into HIV - you need to say WHY the piece of work you've posted is important for you.

I also think that practically these huge posts don't work. They loose their formatting and become very difficult to read. Other people become discouraged and don't take part in the thread. This thread tends to die out for a while after these big posts, before somebody picks up on something said earlier, ignoring these mega-posts entirely. Threads that start with a mega-post often go nowhere, and sink without a trace.

Nobody is saying that you are not allowed to discuss certain things. But links have their place, and so does actual discussion - that means something you have written, not somebody else. If you want to be listened to, and inform other people here, then this is basic courtesy.

M.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on April 19, 2007, 01:48:47 am
http://www.tranadiscovery.com/

http://www.southernresearch.org/


CARY, N.C. – Trana Discovery Inc. and Southern Research Institute have announced a collaborative research agreement that could lead to the discovery of new classes of drugs for the treatment of patients infected with HIV. Under the agreement, Trana will screen Southern Research's library of approximately 1000 nucleosides against its unique, patented probes to identify anti-infectives with a novel mechanism of action. The Trana probes are employed in a high-throughput screening process to identify compounds that possess tRNA inhibitory activity. By inhibiting the role of tRNA and crippling protein assembly, protein synthesis cannot proceed, thus stopping pathogen growth and the spread of infection. Most pathogens responsible for causing infectious diseases—including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS—require tRNA for replication. “Most anti-infectives deal with ribosome or cell wall synthesis inhibition,” notes Steve Peterson, CEO of Trana Discovery. “No one has looked at tRNA as an entire molecule.” In HIV studies, Trana is looking a specific step where it is known that intervention is possible as HIV enters the cell and is integrated into a new viron that then reenters the cytoplasm to continue infecting other cells. The Trana assay identifies inhibitors of the tRNA recruited by HIV during this phase of replication. “Step 8 is where the virus must go into a cell, typically a T-cell, to recruit a tRNA lysine,” Trana’s Peterson says. “Other researchers have demonstrated that where tRNA lysine has been physically removed, HIV won’t reproduce. HIV takes human tRNA and unfolds it into a non-human shape, but the anticodon stem loop (Step 8) is still there. We are looking for compounds that bind to it and, in effect, remove the key from the lock so it cannot be opened to reproduce.” Trana's technology can also be used to interrupt the life cycle of bacteria and fungal pathogens. The company’s business model is to license its technology and intellectual property for specific viruses, bacteria and fungi so that licensees’ libraries can be used to develop multiple drugs. Southern Research is a leader in the field of nucleoside chemistry and biology. To date, the institute has discovered six FDA-approved cancer drugs and has four additional drugs that are currently in clinical trials. SRI claims that no other company or institution has brought six of its own cancer drug discoveries to market. “There are unique components to the formula here that are necessary for drug discovery,” says David Harris, director of drug discovery business development at Southern Research. “We have a full tool box – from early to late, enough scale to make it through to IND, a clear focus on the goal of drug discovery and the freedom to pursue our goals that is very similar to that found in academia.” The institute initiated a program two years ago to expand its biological and chemical diversity through external collaborations. “We have been looking to screen our proprietary repository against new targets to identify compounds that deserve further investigation,” Harris adds. “We're particularly excited about the possibility of discovering a new class of anti-HIV medicine through the use of the tRNA mechanism of action.”   “We have been seeking compounds to demonstrate commercialization opportunities for our tRNA intellectual property and for further chemical optimization,” adds Peterson. “This agreement is a great step toward the advancement of our technology.” In the future, the partners plan to explore a variety of joint projects to discover new compounds for the treatment of other serious bacterial and viral infectious diseases.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mistertonky on April 19, 2007, 02:55:58 am

Identifying the membrane proteome of HIV-1 latently infected cells

Berro R, de la Fuente C, Klase Z, Kehn K, Parvin L, Pumfery A, Agbottah E, Vertes A, Nekhai S, Kashanchi F.; Genetics Program, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The George Washington University, School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037, USA.

Profiling integral plasma membrane proteins is of particular importance for the identification of new biomarkers for diagnosis and for drug development. We report in this study the identification of surface markers by performing comparative proteomics of established human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) latent cell models and parental cell lines. To this end we isolated integral membrane proteins using a biotin-directed affinity purification method. Isolated proteins were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) after in gel digestion. Seventeen different proteins were found to vary on the surface of T-cells due to HIV-1 infection. Of these proteins, 47% were integral membrane proteins, and 18% were membrane-associated. Through the use of complementary techniques such as Western blotting and fluorescent staining, we confirmed the differential expression of some of the proteins identified by MALDI-TOF including Bruton's tyrosine kinase and X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis. Finally, using phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitors and flavopiridol to inhibit Bruton's tyrosine kinase localization at the membrane and X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein expression, respectively, we showed that HIV-1 latently infected cells are more sensitive to these drugs than uninfected cells. This suggests that HIV-1 latently infected cells may be targeted with drugs that alter several pathways that are essential for the establishment and maintenance of latency.

[J Biol Chem.]
2007 Mar 16;282(11):8207-18

http://www.cprmap.com/infectious-diseases/hiv-proteomics-16898.html

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 19, 2007, 07:53:57 am
Okay - so that's actually quite interesting. Basically saying that cells express different surface proteins as a result of HIV infection, and that these can be interfered with to interrupt latency.

Neat. So how come you didn't put that up first MisterT?!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: putin22 on April 21, 2007, 05:16:34 am
FROM SPAIN

http://www.invenia.es/bbs:SEIRC-TO31

AIDS gene therapy: A vector able to selectively destroy latently HIV-1 infected cells
Interesarse por esta oferta | Navegador de ofertas

Centro de Innovación y Transferencia de Tecnología de Andalucía S.A.U.
Sevilla, España
An Andalusian research group has developed a new technology that destroys latent HIV-1 infected cells. No harm is detected in uninfected cells. Conventional HIV-1 therapy is compromised by viral reservoirs of latently infected cells. The main advantage of this new technology is that it is specifically designed against the viral reservoirs and therefore it is a promising new approach in the therapy against HIV-1 infection. They are looking for agreements.

Publicidad
Contenidos
An Andalusian research group has developed a lentiviral HIV-1 derived vector to destroy latent HIV-1 infected cells. These cells represent a major problem in HIV-1 therapy because these viruses are not sensitive to the anti-retrovirals. Patients have to receive the anti-retroviral therapy to live, which represents for them a low quality of life and to suffer severe adverse secondary effects from therapy, which may cause serious health problems. The vector allows the selective destruction of these cells and therefore it is a promising new approach for the HIV-1 infection therapy. The vector was made according to these main characteristics:

1.- The vector was made including all the cis-acting sequences needed for packaging in infectious particles. This will allow its use in in vivo gene therapy.

2.- The vector contains a genetic system that allows the detection of silent HIV-1 proviruses with just the addition of an externally added inducer. Without the addition of the inducer the vector is silent.

3.- The vector contains a lethal gene that is expressed only in the presence of both, an externally added inducer and a HIV-1 provirus present in the cell. In this case the cell dies.

4.- No toxicity was observed in cells that do not contain a HIV-1 provirus.

5.- The vector has been successfully tested in vitro, and its flexible design allows, if necessary, easy changes to improve its performance in vivo.

Finally, the research group has experience in molecular and cellular biology and has worked in the HIV-1 natural history and its modification by the therapy in the last ten years.


Innovative Aspects:

Current HIV-1 therapies are able to abolish the viral growth in most cases and they can reduce the blood viral burden to undetectable levels for a very long time. However, latently infected cells that are not affected by these anti-retroviral therapies remain in the patient. Due to the presence of these latently infected cells, a gap of just two or three weeks in the anti-retroviral therapy is enough to reach very high levels of blood viral burden. Therefore, at present HIV-1 infection is not cured totally, being the latently infected cells the main reason for this therapy fails.

This innovation allows the selective destruction of the latently infected cells, which is not achieved by the current therapies. Thus, it might be a good complementary therapy to the current anti-retrovirals. For this reason this innovation it is a promising new approach for the HIV-1 infection therapy.


Main Advantages:

The main advantages of this innovations are:

1.- It is a possible new HIV-1 anti-retroviral therapy that destroys latently infected cells, which are not resolved by current therapies.

2.- It is complementary to the current anti-retroviral therapies.

3.- No toxicity was detected in not infected cells, tested by in vitro experiments. No adverse effects are expected to be found in patients.

4.- Especial equipment will not be required for its clinical use since it is designed for in vivo gene therapy.

Datos contacto
Avda. Isaac Newton, s/n
E-41092
Tel.: +34 955039832
Tel.: +34 955 06 42 32
Fax.: +34 955039835
mariajose.romero.ext@juntadeandalucia.es





Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on April 21, 2007, 10:32:46 am
Yeah - this is a neat idea, if it works. The lentivirus incorporates the lethal gene into the genes of the CD4 cells, making it die, if HIV proviral genes are present.

The proviral genes are unmasked by the addition of an "inducer". I'm not entirely sure what they're using, or how it works from this post - and it's kind of key to the whole thing.

M.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: pagnoco on April 28, 2007, 11:40:58 am
CROI 2007 targeting hiv reservoirs

http://www.retroconference.org/2007/Sessions/090.htm

http://www.retroconference.org/2007/PDFs/500.pdf

VPA DRUGS IT IS NOT STRONG ENOUGHG AND THEY ARE TESTING  STRONGER DRUGS

SMALL MOLECULE INHIBITORS OF HISTONE DEACETYLASES AS A MEANS TO INDUCE HIV EXPRESSION FROM LATENLY INFECTED CD4 T CELLS, THIS HDAC DRUGS IS AT LEAST 2 OR 3 TIMES  MORE POTENT THAN VALPROIC ACID OF DOC SICIALIANO TRIAL LAST YEAR.


MORE.. MORE.. MORE

TARGETING LATENT HIV CELLS


http://www.cprmap.com/infectious-diseases/hiv-proteomics-16898.html


#2
Identifying the membrane proteome of HIV-1 latently infected cells
Berro R, de la Fuente C, Klase Z, Kehn K, Parvin L, Pumfery A, Agbottah E, Vertes A, Nekhai S, Kashanchi F.; Genetics Program, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The George Washington University, School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037, USA.

Profiling integral plasma membrane proteins is of particular importance for the identification of new biomarkers for diagnosis and for drug development. We report in this study the identification of surface markers by performing comparative proteomics of established human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) latent cell models and parental cell lines. To this end we isolated integral membrane proteins using a biotin-directed affinity purification method. Isolated proteins were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) after in gel digestion. Seventeen different proteins were found to vary on the surface of T-cells due to HIV-1 infection. Of these proteins, 47% were integral membrane proteins, and 18% were membrane-associated. Through the use of complementary techniques such as Western blotting and fluorescent staining, we confirmed the differential expression of some of the proteins identified by MALDI-TOF including Bruton's tyrosine kinase and X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis. Finally, using phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitors and flavopiridol to inhibit Bruton's tyrosine kinase localization at the membrane and X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein expression, respectively, we showed that HIV-1 latently infected cells are more sensitive to these drugs than uninfected cells. This suggests that HIV-1 latently infected cells may be targeted with drugs that alter several pathways that are essential for the establishment and maintenance of latency.

[J Biol Chem.]
2007 Mar 16;282(11):8207-




NOW THEY CAN TARGET THE LATENT HIV CELLS....

http://www.gwu.edu/~vertes/publicat_html/Berro%202007.pdf


Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Fosbery on May 18, 2007, 02:29:39 pm
Sorry to pop anyone's balloon here, but I know of three pharmaceutical companies working on a cure. So quit with the back-of-the-envelope nonsense about them not wanting to do it.

That's a tellin them Hivworker, Im with you, we must stay optmistic and have faith in our scientist, I do and must other wise what hope do we have.

Fosbery
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: RobT on May 23, 2007, 07:02:32 pm
If all of big Pharma looks at this in the long-term, instead of their short-term goals; it wud mean that they wud not have to continually research and spend huge sums of $$$$ for a short-term solution and that they cud get to more long-term ways. Plus, they wud b able to profit from finding a "cure". I wud much rather spend the funds, if I had them to a more long-term solution instead of being close to broke on short-term fixes.

Rob
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: jivemiguel1 on June 08, 2007, 06:29:16 pm
For anybody who cares to comment on this, I welcome it.  After having separate conversations with two respected Aids doctors, I was sorrowfully informed, that a vaccine is at least 20 years away.  Sure, there will be treatment, but an actual cure or prevention is still 2 decades in the making.  Kinda let the wind out of my sails.  Guess I should be thankful, we've come as far as we have with our current treatment.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jake72 on June 08, 2007, 11:09:34 pm
Some people feel that a therapeutic vaccine will arrive before a preventive vaccine.  As has been discussed here, a therapeutic vaccine wouldn't be an outright cure, but it could allow people to dump their medications or at least go for longer periods without medications.  There are also other possibilities, such as gene therapy, which wouldn't be a 'cure', but could possibly allow people to ditch their meds and still control the virus. 

As for me, I don't really care if HIV is there as long as it doesn't do anything and I don't have to take medications.  In that respect, HIV would be like chicken pox, a virus that stays with us always but is usually under control.  Chicken pox can't be cured and isn't entirely cleared, as far as I know.  Bottom line: those of us who had chicken pox as kids usually don't think too much about it as adults because there's no reason to think about it even though the virus is in our systems.  HIV could possibly be the same kind of situation, and to me, practically speaking, that'd be just as good as a cure that'd clear the virus. 

So even if a cure or preventive vaccine doesn't appear for 20 years, things could still get a LOT easier for us before then.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Central79 on June 09, 2007, 06:24:32 am
That's a tellin them Hivworker, Im with you, we must stay optmistic and have faith in our scientist, I do and must other wise what hope do we have.

Fosbery


He never told us which 3. It's just not reasonable to say "I know about this, so stop discussing that" and then just leave it there.

I'm not saying that the pharmaceutical industry is intrinsically evil. All of the current therapies against HIV come from that industry. But the way in which it's structured - being both fragmented and highly competitive and also involving large research costs mean that companies tend to research diseases that affect rich Western countries (when was the last anti-Malarial?!) and also avoid pioneering really novel approaches to disease. I think the cure for HIV is going to take a major, co-ordinated effort that might be beyond the risk a pharmaceutical is willing or able to make.

Look at HIV vaccines. A lot of money has gone into simply co-ordinating the global effort and making sure results are shared, and research isn't duplicated. There's nothing similar in the pharmaceutical industry for the cure (how could there be?).

M.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: ARMANDO on June 09, 2007, 06:50:16 am
THERS IS NO MONEY IN A CURE!!!THINK ABOUT IT AND FACE IT !!!JUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH HIV INSTEAD OF THNKING YOU CAN DIE FROM IT!!
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on June 09, 2007, 11:02:41 am
If we assumed that type of thinking, Armando, there would never historically been a cure for ANY disease.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: resul on June 12, 2007, 10:42:17 pm
I'M SURE
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: powerpuff on June 13, 2007, 05:33:51 pm
no virus has been cured ...till now/  hep c  :o
2/3 of cases can be cleared with duel treatment pegatron pegasus/ interferon new cases show!
depending on your GENOtype some cases are tougher.... :-\ see your doc

My best friend just cleared hep C. this is a pivitol in treatment history.

HMMMM now just to beat that pesky Aids virus...more challenging >:(
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: HIVworker on July 14, 2007, 07:53:21 am
THERS IS NO MONEY IN A CURE!!!THINK ABOUT IT AND FACE IT !!!JUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH HIV INSTEAD OF THNKING YOU CAN DIE FROM IT!!

I better give up my job then.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: J.R.E. on July 14, 2007, 11:55:34 pm
I better give up my job then.

Hello R,


I was wondering, when you were going to chime in again. Hey, Keep up the good work for us !



Ray
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jimrican on July 15, 2007, 04:34:20 am
So much talk about a cure in our lifetime but so far no virus has a cure. HIV is so potent that they hide in places meds don't reach. How likely is it that a cure is found?

I'm still hopeful that pharmaceuticals will get tired of spending millions of dollars researching for meds they know won't work and start looking for a cure in natural remedies: e.g. something as simple as Vit C  seems to be toxic to virus cells when administered in megadoses...Vit C, however, don't hurt healthy human cells..That'd be cheaper and more accesible, but sadly, there are financial interests behind all this issue...Besides, most medical training on HIV/ Aids are funded by the same pharmaceuticals...
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: allopathicholistic on July 16, 2007, 01:44:46 pm
The term you are looking for is "Sustained Virological Response" meaning the virus doesn't come back off meds ever. There will always be the guts of inactive HIV in the blood and HIV antibodies. But the body would have no active HIV. That's as good as it would get.

What updates (if any) are there on Sustained Virological Response
???

(sigh  :-\)
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: bear60 on July 16, 2007, 03:52:44 pm
Quote jimrican
"I'm still hopeful that pharmaceuticals will get tired of spending millions of dollars researching for meds they know won't work and start looking for a cure in natural remedies: e.g. something as simple as Vit C  seems to be toxic to virus cells when administered in megadoses...Vit C, however, don't hurt healthy human cells..That'd be cheaper and more accesible, but sadly, there are financial interests behind all this issue...Besides, most medical training on HIV/ Aids are funded by the same pharmaceuticals..."
..................................
I am really glad he is not employed by a pharmaceutical company.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: LittlePill on July 30, 2007, 10:03:43 am
I'm not sure if an outright cure will ever be found but I do think there will be a therapeutic vaccine in the near future.  Maybe something that offers better control of the virus with very minimal side effects. From everything I've read, this seems to be the direction that they are heading. This doesn't seem to be an overly optimistic view but a reality. If they'd at least get that far, then I'd be happy. And it does seem that they are going to get that far in the near future...right?  :-\
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on July 30, 2007, 11:11:40 am
Well LittlePill, you'd have to define what you mean by "near future," which is why I took issue with this at the treads beginning and having it as a choice in the poll.

It's entirely too vague, and it's rendered the entire thread and its poll results utterly useless.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: a2z on August 24, 2007, 03:07:25 am
My first post here, so bear with me.

I don't think there will be a cure for a long while, if only because what I consider to be a cure is as follows:
   1) It can be eradicated from your body without major side effects
   2) It can reverse a certain amount of immune system damage (in terms that your immune system from that point forward your immune system will work as it did pre-infection, not that your liver, which was damaged as a result of HIV/AIDS will come back to normal.)
   3) You cannot infect others  -- (right now I'd settle for a vaccine that would prevent others from passing the virus through sex -- I wonder if an anti-ejaculate could be developed....)
 
I think that, or even a good preventive vaccine, are at least two decades off.

I do think good therapies, where one might have to take a pill or injection every few weeks, are around the corner -- certainly within 5-7 years.  (Could TNX-355 or PRO-140, and Racivir be keys to a twice-monthly cocktail)
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: ZCorker on August 31, 2007, 01:06:18 am
Yes.  I think there will be a cure, but that cure will be somewhat dependent on hiv patients taking steps to incorporate systematic and incremental discoveries into existing vaccine and other treatment modalities.

Below is an article that described a discovery from French Researchers in Quebec.  They discovered that the only reason T-Cells don't kill hiv is because of a missing protein http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/50180.php

Now if this missing protein was added to the vaccine developed by Dr. Gravatais (spelling?) at UCLA, we might have a treatment that could really do something.  Ultimately it is up to patients to put the two sources together.  For those of you who don't recall who Dr. Gravatis (spelling?) is, she is the doctor who discovered how to protect the outer shell during the pasteurization process.  This came out over four years ago.  From a historical point, the Salk Hiv Vaccine was not able to accomplish this, but Dr. Gravaitis figured out how to improve the Salk Vaccine so that it would accomplish this.  What researchers found was that the body produced a huge amount of Gamma Interferon if the outer shell was protected.

Million dollar question is this?  Is anyone working on putting these sources together?  Or even other vaccine manufacturers?  I personal sent an email to NIH about the protein discovery and questioned why this newly discovered bit of research isn't being utilized.

Whether or not there is a cure is going to be dependent on hiv patients willingness to get involved.  Much of the treatment and research we have today is as a direct result of hiv patients taking the time to contact people, researchers, and raise private funds to fund these projects.  Dr. Gravaitis (spelling?) vaccine project was funded by a $25,000 grant made from a private fund raising organization in Los Angeles.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Customer on September 03, 2007, 01:23:58 pm

Even if BIG pharmaceutical companies migth not be interested in finding a cure, they nevertheless have interest in improving traditional haart (once a week cocktail, less side effects...). They all want to have the best-seller.

As time goes on some of the older patents run out of time, and more and more older generation haart-drugs can be legally plagiated and manufactured, this will reduce the cost of haart. Competition reduces the prices. On the other hand, more and more people will be infected.

In the meantime, smaller companies and universities are looking for the "cure", or vaccine.  When is the cure on the market? - I would bet 10 years from now. Some good ideas are out there already. (Cure means in this context not eradication, it means permanent neutralization ans isolation).

It is a question of setting up economical circumstances where financial benefit is sufficient driving force for cure-development.



Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: thunter34 on September 03, 2007, 04:34:24 pm
right now I'd settle for a vaccine that would prevent others from passing the virus through sex -- I wonder if an anti-ejaculate could be developed....)
 


God, I hope not.  For better or worse, I would rather have the illness.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on September 03, 2007, 05:09:47 pm
Wow, I missed that too.  I'd just as soon be six feet under than have my orgasm taken away.  I mean really -- what the point?
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: silence79 on September 05, 2007, 03:57:40 pm
Re:  Bill Gates.  Just note that Gates says we will likely have a vaccine in his lifetime.  Remember, everyone, a vaccine is not a cure. 

Sorry to rain on the parade, but let's keep our terminology straight.

Lol...im sorry i dont mean to rain on your rain, but here's another one of bill's famous predictions:

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

:)
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: thunter34 on September 05, 2007, 04:02:28 pm
Wow, I missed that too.  I'd just as soon be six feet under than have my orgasm taken away.  I mean really -- what the point?


testify!  hell, i wouldn't even want just the CUM to be taken away- even if we still had the big O.

but i'm nasty like that, so...
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: a2z on September 06, 2007, 07:37:02 am

testify!  hell, i wouldn't even want just the CUM to be taken away- even if we still had the big O.

but i'm nasty like that, so...

Yeah I was just referring to the cum as opposed to the orgasm.... I didn't always ejaculate when I had orgasms for the first few years I had sex.

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: a2z on September 06, 2007, 07:40:10 am
Wow, I missed that too.  I'd just as soon be six feet under than have my orgasm taken away.  I mean really -- what the point?

Anti-ejaculate, not anti-orgasm.  ;) 

Condoms are ultimately the answer, but I'm sure there are some places (like say...prison) where I can see such an idea cutting down on the HIV infection rate.

But then again, I'm not a scientist.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Matty the Damned on September 06, 2007, 07:42:03 am
a2z,

I don't want to seem disrespectful, but are you HIV positive?

MtD
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: dico on November 02, 2014, 04:32:02 am
it is funny to see that back in 2007 majority of forumers thought there will be a cure within 5 years...

Now that we will enter 2015, we know there is no clinical trial yet of therapeutics that has shown success in preclinical trials...

But 3 clinical trials are of some importance :
- Andrieu's vaccine (nearly 100% monkeys protected)
- Picker's vaccine (60% monkeys protected and 50% completely cleared of HIV)
- Baltimore's VIP vaccine (100% monkeys protected)

The first trial will begin in February/March 2015
The second trial will begin sometime in 2016
The third trial will begin sometime in 2015

the Phase I results will not be known before 2016/2017...

So back in 2007, people were really optimistic lol
And maybe us too we are...
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mecch on November 02, 2014, 07:09:42 am
A majority is more than half. The poll you revivified out of its grave was 39.5% for "within the the next 5 years."
177 members voted. That was far from enough to say the poll represented the total number of Forum Members, let alone the opinion of such.

Happy Halloween!   ::)
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: dico on November 02, 2014, 08:00:05 am
A relative majority yes and not far from an absolute majority
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: zach on November 02, 2014, 08:09:31 am
yes, though not soon. i'm won't holding my breath, but i'd welcome it when it gets here

don't spin the numbers, it's not necessary
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jeff G on November 02, 2014, 08:22:47 am
I predict there will be a cure by 5 central time this very eve ! I have been wrong before though .
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: leatherman on November 02, 2014, 08:32:45 am
So back in 2007, people were really optimistic lol
no, that's simply the incorrect conclusion based on those choices. The results of that poll we took just showed how under-educated HIV positive people were (and still are IMHO) as to how drugs are created, tested, approved, and eventually marketed. Anyone looking at the status of trials in 07, especially with a minimal understanding of the drug-manufacturing process, should have easily understood that another decade would go by before anything like a cure might have become marketable - and that it would only happen in a best case scenario.

Frankly looking at the the progress today toward potential candidates for a cure or vaccine, and trying to predict an unknowable future, I would bet that we're probably still a decade away . . . at least.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: dico on November 02, 2014, 10:08:41 am
And what about creating another thread with the same poll ? I dont know how to do that

It will be interesting and within 5 years another new pozie will come and say "look at how optimistic people were..."

It's like a circle.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on November 02, 2014, 11:39:59 am
let's not and say we did
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Ptrk3 on November 02, 2014, 11:53:24 am
Or do and say we didn't :o

By-the-bye:  haven't seen much from Irish lately.  Are his knickers in a twist over the scolding he go a couple weeks back?  I do miss his posts, though.  He is a unique spirit.  Irish, come back.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: absopozilutely on November 02, 2014, 04:04:37 pm
Or do and say we didn't :o

By-the-bye:  haven't seen much from Irish lately.  Are his knickers in a twist over the scolding he go a couple weeks back?  I do miss his posts, though.  He is a unique spirit.  Irish, come back.
Irish sends his regards ptrk, however he will not be returning due to said knickers. Lol.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: buginme2 on November 02, 2014, 04:31:49 pm
Do I think there will be a cure for hiv: yes

Estimated time of arrival: 25 years



I'm not really worried about it.  If there is, there is.  If there's not, there's not.  It's not the end of the world, anymore...used to be.


I kind of consider arv's to be the cure.  They do the job.  Only thing a cure will do is let me stop taking them.  But if my quality of life is good taking them, the benefit of that is minor.

I am looking forward to a monthly injection.  That would be convenient if you could do it yourself. 
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: dico on November 02, 2014, 04:54:51 pm
The question is do drugs eliminate hiv transmission ? No

So a cure is needed
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mecch on November 02, 2014, 05:07:14 pm
The question is do drugs eliminate hiv transmission ? No

So a cure is needed

Hello? Treatment as prevention have you heard of it?  Done correctly it works. 

Listen its fine to be hopeful for a cure AND in the meantime we got to get on with living.

A cure for HIV is not a panacea for living a good life.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: buginme2 on November 02, 2014, 05:13:25 pm
The question is do drugs eliminate hiv transmission ? No

So a cure is needed

Where have you been?  Yeah they do
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: dico on November 02, 2014, 06:23:56 pm
Wow. Some people think that the negative partner will take Prep all its life to fuck with his poz partner. which world are you living in ? Who can afford to buy Truvada every month ? Prep is not free in the great majority of country. And what percentage of people will accept to live with a pozie and take Prep all their life ?

Second, majority of infected people are not able to take ART because it is too expensive. So a vaccine could save lots of lives. let's not forget them.

Third, we are not sure if there is really zero transmission with an undetectable poz . What we know for sure is that it happened in the past and even undetectable elite controllers have transmitted the virus.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Jeff G on November 02, 2014, 06:30:38 pm
Wow. Some people think that the negative partner will take Prep all its life to fuck with his poz partner. which world are you living in ?


PrEP is very effective
Wow. Some people think that the negative partner will take Prep all its life to fuck with his poz partner. which world are you living in ? Who can afford to buy Truvada every month ? Prep is not free in the great majority of country. And what percentage of people will accept to live with a pozie and take Prep all their life ?

Second, majority of infected people are not able to take ART because it is too expensive. So a vaccine could save lots of lives. let's not forget them.

Third, we are not sure if there is really zero transmission with an undetectable poz . What we know for sure is that it happened in the past and even undetectable elite controllers have transmitted the virus.

Many insurance plans do pay for PrEP ... it’s not the end all but an important tool in the arsenal .
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mecch on November 02, 2014, 06:35:13 pm
Wow. Some people think that the negative partner will take Prep all its life to fuck with his poz partner. which world are you living in ? Who can afford to buy Truvada every month ? Prep is not free in the great majority of country. And what percentage of people will accept to live with a pozie and take Prep all their life ?

Second, majority of infected people are not able to take ART because it is too expensive. So a vaccine could save lots of lives. let's not forget them.

Third, we are not sure if there is really zero transmission with an undetectable poz . What we know for sure is that it happened in the past and even undetectable elite controllers have transmitted the virus.

Treatment as prevention is HAART for HIV+ people.   The HIV - sex partner DOESNT NEED TO TAKE PREP. 
HELLO?

PREP is a slightly different set-up.  Nobody is counseling people in sero-discordant relationships to take PREP for the rest of their lives....

May I ask what country you live in so I can know the context of your statements about the price of treatment and access.   Where is this majority of people who cannot take treatment because of cost?  USA?  Or, where? It would help all - some specifics, will help us understand your reasoning.

You are throwing a LOT of diverse issues into this soup of a justification, you realise that?

And have you seen the price of the HEP C cure.  Don't count on an HIV cure being an exception to the rule, and freely available to everyone around the world.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: zettainaoru on November 02, 2014, 08:49:21 pm
Wow. Some people think that the negative partner will take Prep all its life to fuck with his poz partner. which world are you living in ? Who can afford to buy Truvada every month ? Prep is not free in the great majority of country. And what percentage of people will accept to live with a pozie and take Prep all their life ?

Just adding information.
Latest research said that its effective to take Prep only 2 days before and 2 days after having unprotected sex.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Giancarlo on November 03, 2014, 03:59:24 am
Last July UNAIDS issued a report in Melbourne in which they describe their strategy to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-health-hiv-unaids-idUSKBN0FL0RX20140716

This strategy does not involve a vaccine, or a cure, because nothing such is available right now and we have no guarantee that it might become available in the near future.
So, their strategy is only about providing a wider access to effective antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Thanks to ART:
- no more HIV transmissions
- no more HIV+ persons progressing from HIV to AIDS

If this strategy proves effective, I don't think that finding a cure or a vaccine will be a priority anymore, as it was in the last decades. So I'm afraid that there will not be a lot of funding for this kind of research.
Although I would love to be cured someday, I am afraid that it might never happen, unless someone makes a big discovery "by chance" in the next 5-10 years.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on November 03, 2014, 08:03:08 am
I think dico was referring to resource poor countries in his post, where we must remember the majority of new infections (and old) are always going to be.

35 million cases globally, only 2.5 million of those are in resource rich countries. Basically PrEP is irrelevant in that context. However this will change eventually once the patent expires globally, but I've read that will not happen until 2021 for Truvada.

edit: August 2013 FDA approved a generic Truvada for use outside of the US-only under PEPFAR due to shift in WHO treatment guidelines/cd4 threshold. Still, it remains to be seen how this would apply to PrEP in such settings.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Almost2late on November 03, 2014, 12:54:45 pm
I am looking forward to a monthly injection.  That would be convenient if you could do it yourself.

Yes!.. Even better, once every three months to coincide with the doctors visits :)
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mecch on November 03, 2014, 01:31:14 pm
I think dico was referring to resource poor countries in his post, where we must remember the majority of new infections (and old) are always going to be.

35 million cases globally, only 2.5 million of those are in resource rich countries. Basically PrEP is irrelevant in that context. However this will change eventually once the patent expires globally, but I've read that will not happen until 2021 for Truvada.

edit: August 2013 FDA approved a generic Truvada for use outside of the US-only under PEPFAR due to shift in WHO treatment guidelines/cd4 threshold. Still, it remains to be seen how this would apply to PrEP in such settings.

Here is my motivation for my posts in this thread.

I perceive Dico to have high anxiety about living with HIV. (true or false I don't know) 

Some of us have poked at the reasons he (she?) maintains this anxiety - because I guess we think it might be a good idea to come down to earth.

Dico mentions a number of "rationales" for why the Cure is so important - but these seem to show insufficient awareness of the current facts about living with HIV.

My impression is that a lot of Dico's "arguments" are free-floating, anxious-making "rationalisations", but not based on reality.

I wonder the real reasons? If its due to unnecessary fatalism about HIV then its a pity.

Dico you can think what you want or feel what you want.  And it might be best if you could educate yourself enough to know when your "rationalisations" -- taken from the "general experience" don't hold water. Are they used to justify your anxiety - which is based on what, exactly?  Better to search within for why: this high anxiety (if that is what you have - I dunno) and this over-investment in the cure.

As far as "most HIV+ people in the world are too poor to have treatment" - I think this is an old truth, but now threatens to be a stereotype because it seems in very recent years this is changing (has changed) quite a lot.   

Some people in developing countries list the combos available to them, through national socialised schemes - and its not always the old "crappy" meds anymore.  Also, intense roll-out of sponsored treatment in the very poor nations.

So its probably best to not cling to old "images" that only make the HIV epidemic and the fight to end it seem more hopeless or negative than it is. 

As other members have pointed out, there are plans to END the epidemic NOT based on the availability of a cure.

finally this one particular justification or rationalisation, ("we need a cure for HIV because most people are too poor to afford treatment)  if held by a member of a rich nation, seems to have a LOT OF PROBLEMS attached to it.  Do I need to go into them?

Dico of course I don't know what country you are from so I am not assuming anything.

Finally - I know that poverty and unequal distribution and access to health care is a problem in the HIV epidemic.  But let's just not assume anything who is poor and who does and doesn't have something, and make generalisations based on.... anything but facts...
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: Miss Philicia on November 03, 2014, 03:23:44 pm
Meech, all that may be true but is this board a form of the Inquisition? If dico isn't willing to engage in a discussion of such matters then what is the point? I agree it's an important topic to bring up with someone, but to do it over and over and over serves no purpose. If and when he realizes that's what he's been doing the damage will be so great he/she will only benefit from engaging a professional therapist, not people on a message board with no training in such things.
Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: buginme2 on November 03, 2014, 06:10:34 pm
Meech mentioned this and I think it's probably the most important aspect of this discussion.  The END of the hiv epidemic is already in the works with the current treatment and prevention methods in place.

Treatment as prevention, prep, pep, and safer sex practices combined with increased testing have a real chance in ending hiv.

Hillary Clinton and President Obama have talked of it among many others.  Ending the hiv epidemic may have nothing to do with a cure.

If the epidemic is over, is a cure even necessary? 

Title: Re: Do u think HIV/AIDS will ever have a cure?
Post by: mecch on November 03, 2014, 06:14:55 pm
Meech, all that may be true but is this board a form of the Inquisition? If dico isn't willing to engage in a discussion of such matters then what is the point? I agree it's an important topic to bring up with someone, but to do it over and over and over serves no purpose. If and when he realizes that's what he's been doing the damage will be so great he/she will only benefit from engaging a professional therapist, not people on a message board with no training in such things.
Agreed.