AMFAR Jumping On Gene Therapy Bandwagon

[Inchlingblue]

Manipulating the Smallest Building Blocks of Life to Defeat the World’s Biggest Infectious Disease Killer amfAR FUNDS CUTTING-EDGE GENE THERAPY APPROACHES TO HIV PREVENTION, TREATMENT, AND CURE
 
NEW YORK Feb 18, 2010—amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, on Thursday announced the recipients of its first ever awards for gene therapy research, supporting a broad range of strategies aimed at thwarting the virus both directly as well as by blocking its access to the cells it needs in order to replicate.

“This group of research projects constitutes a particularly strong first foray into this new and constantly evolving research field,” said Rowena Johnston, Ph.D., amfAR’s vice president and director of research. “amfAR is particularly pleased to play a role in supporting the creative thinking and bold efforts these scientists are bringing to the improved treatment and prevention of HIV, and possibly its cure.”

The projects to be funded represent a broad range of gene therapy approaches to subverting the process of HIV infection and eradicating the virus. Dr. Keith Jerome of the University of Washington, for example, will be using homing endonucleases—a type of molecular scissors—to lethally cut up the HIV genome.Dr. Joseph Anderson of the University of California-Davis will explore a new and more efficient means of delivering gene therapy into the body of a patient, while Dr. Alejandro Balazs of the California Institute of Technology will use his amfAR funding to engineer and test a variety of immune interventions that could be developed into a vaccine. Dr. Balazs will conduct his research under the supervision of Nobel prize-winning scientist Dr. David Baltimore.

amfAR’s interest in exploring the role of gene therapy in the eradication of HIV infection stems from a February 2009 report in the New England Journal of Medicine of a patient in Berlin with acute myeloid leukemia who underwent stem cell transplantation from an unrelated donor who carried a specific mutation that blocks HIV infection. To date, despite being off all antiretroviral therapy for more than two years, and off all immune suppressive medications, no HIV has been detected in this patient.

“For many years, gene therapy approaches to the treatment of disease have not lived up to their promise,” said Dr. Johnston. “But the science has come a long way and there are good reasons to hope that this field of study could ultimately lead to the conquest of HIV.”

Continued . . . .More information about the 2010 amfAR gene therapy award recipients:

LINK:

http://www.amfar.org/lab/article.aspx?id=8465&tr=y&auid=5957911

[GNYC09]

Very interesting news! thank you.

[cpdh20]

news like this have always brough tears to my eyes every time i read one, hopefully one day a breakthrough would come to end all of our suffers...

[red_Dragon888]

news like this have always brough tears to my eyes every time i read one, hopefully one day a breakthrough would come to end all of our suffers...

here here...