British exploring - kick and kill research

[Sparky39]

Interesting movement on the targeting of dormant HIV.... another step in the right direction....

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20160919/Researchers-develop-innovative-technique-for-detecting-HIV-hiding-places-in-infected-patients.aspx?

[CaveyUK]

There are a myriad of research projects looking at 'kick and kill' strategies as part of a 'cure'. It would be nice for one of them to come up with the solution but I guess common sense tells me that without something really quite toxic, it will be hard to reach some of the reservoirs which may harbour latent virus (such as the brain or lymph tissue). Would be nice to be proved wrong though!

Whats good is that studies like this are actually happening, and the medical world hasn't ceased the impetus in HIV cure research due to the benefits of effective ART now giving most people a pretty much normal lifespan even with the latent virus.

[Hoyland]

And here is another team's work that is already in the clinic.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/british-scientists-on-brink-of-hiv-cure/news-story/eb61aed39d55b66b5ee1a3ede082f995

[Ptrk3]

Hoyland:  your link leads to a story behind a "paywall," at least in the United States.

I presume this link leads to the same story, but not behind a "paywall:"

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-10-02/man-undergoing-pioneering-treatment-to-cure-him-of-hiv-showing-remarkable-progress/

It's good to know that the research is ongoing and progressing, but these things take a long time and the media often tends to "exaggerate" things in order to sensationalize the news.  Regardless, the story is a step in the right direction and it's certainly good news that much of the research appears to be in the "clinical" phase!

[Starfox]

Everything new has to be approached with caution and to not get ahead of ourselves but if this approach works im over the moon



[The Telegraph]
''A 44-year-old man in England is possibly the first person in history to be cured of HIV. Scientists working on an experimental new therapy say that the virus is now completely undetectable in his blood.

A team gathered from five UK universities is currently conducting trials on 50 people. Mark Samuels, managing director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure, told The Sunday Times, “We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”

Currently, antiretroviral therapies can target active T-cells which are infected with HIV but they cannot treat dormant T-cells. This means that patients bodies continue to reproduce the virus.

“This therapy is specifically designed to clear the body of all HIV viruses, including dormant ones,” Professor Sarah Fidler, a consultant physician at Imperial College London, told the Times.

Working in two stages, the new treatment consists of a vaccine to help the body recognize any HIV-infected cells and a drug called Vorinostat activates the dormant T-cells. This method could give a patient’s immune system the tools it so desperately needs.

The patient has not been identified but we know he’s a social care worker in London. He is cautiously thrilled about the results saying, “It would be great if a cure has happened. My last blood test was a couple of weeks ago and there is no detectable virus.”

Fidler says that the researchers are still a long way from a finished therapy, “We will continue with medical tests for the next five years and at the moment we are not recommending stopping Art but in the future, depending on the test results we may explore this.”

http://gizmodo.com/british-man-may-be-the-first-person-cured-of-hiv-1787334810?rev=1475438202413&utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[paintedroom]

Can`t help a flicker of excitement.

[Ptrk3]

This story was posted yesterday, too, so here's the link to that thread:

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=64128.0

[xinyuan]

Actually, the news sites seem reserved and cautious on this one.

The vorinostat + vaccine combination is a well-supported possibility among established infectious disease experts to reservoir reduction, and thus practical cure.

The involved scientists outright state that they will need at least 5 years of further testing.  This fact shows appropriate skepticism on their part.  So, this smells more real than prior hype spewed by other researchers (Khalili being the best example).  Most important is that these findings are in an actual HUMAN with HIV.

I look forward to any case report that the UK researchers choose to publish.

If their data really support what the media are reporting, this will truly be a big milestone.

[gorka]

This is exciting news but too early to tell. from some other articles the patient is virus free for relatively short time so far (one article said 5 months) and there were instances of people in the past being undetectable for longer than that and virus rebounding (thinking of Boston patients that underwent same bone marrow transplant as the Brown in Germany and little Miss baby that had virus come back after 2 years off drugs and being undetectable).  But one can only hope that this thing works as well.  Maybe several rounds would be needed to knock it out completely.

[tytyl]

Did anyone see this? Looks like a big step forward.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/02/hiv-cure-close-after-disease-vanishes-from-blood-of-british-man/

[Jim Allen]

Word of caution.

It is nice to see that they are researching something however we have heard such grand claims of cures before that simply did not pan out. Its just a medical trials nothing more nothing less at the moment.

Last time it was the claim we would have a cure in 2 years and some people ditched the meds and less than 4 weeks later, that promising cure utterly failed !
So try not to get your hopes up, keep on your meds and if it does one-day happen than its a nice surprise.

Jim

@tytyl
I merged your post into this thread.

[Jim Allen]

@All
I have merged the 3 topics into 1 thread so its easier for the readers and posters to follow the conversation.

So I don't mind but just as a reminder.

Please use the search function particularly in this in this section to check if we have a thread open that already, if you do open a new topic please include a brief description of why you think it might be of interest to readers. Do not copy past full articles but do feel free to copy and paste short articles – or excerpts from longer articles – in your messages.  Also please provide a basic reference for the information (at least the name of the source and the full URL to the document).

Also when posting new threads here in the Research Forum, please give your thread a title that accurately describes what it's about. Use the name of the trial (or study). This makes it easier for us to keep subjects in one thread, without having three or four threads about the same research. This makes it easier for everyone to find the research news they're interested in.

I am not going to read all the links and some of the post/treads opened I am not sure about but look its up to you to have clear titles and opening posts for the reasons as mentioned above I have changed the name of the thread to
"British exploring - kick and kill research"

Thank you

Jim

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=11292.0

[zettainaoru]

OMGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So excited!!!!!!!

Vorinostat is not as strong as panobinostat or romidhepsin for "kicking" and it had failed in the past. I tought panobinostat would be the cure.
Why did the succeed this time.
But only one from 50.
He is probably the right person in the right treatment.

But it has show us that its POSSIBLE with the kick n kill strategy.

[Jim Allen]

OMGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So excited!!!!!!!

Vorinostat is not as strong as panobinostat or romidhepsin for "kicking" and it had failed in the past. I tought panobinostat would be the cure.
Why did the succeed this time.
But only one from 50.
He is probably the right person in the right treatment.

But it has show us that its POSSIBLE with the kick n kill strategy.

He is not cured, he has just been undetectable for a few weeks in a trial, we have seen such results before end in nothing much than a lesson learned.

Jim

[Skydrake]

He is not cured, he has just been undetectable for a few weeks in a trial, we have seen such results before end in nothing much than a lesson learned.

Jim

...as several ones before.

Reaction of British researchers about "the first man in the world to be cured of HIV"  artitcle on the Telegraph:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ukcherub/status/782697762005651456

[Ptrk3]

Yes, it really is amazing that the "popular" media gets this wrong time and time again.  I never really believe anything these days about HIV-cure research until I read the "real" story in scientific journals or scientific trade publications.

[awakening]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37545953

Beware of headlines which suggest scientists are "on the brink of HIV cure", or "HIV cure close".

[Jim Allen]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37545953

Indeed  This afternoon:

https://www.poz.com/article/uk-papers-erroneously-report-yet-hiv-cure-near

U.K. Papers Erroneously Report, Yet Again, That an HIV Cure Is Near
The misreported news, which originated in The Sunday Times, concerns a “kick-and-kill” cure attempt that still requires years of follow-up.

British journalists have done it again. The United Kingdom’s Sunday Times and The Telegraph have each published erroneous, hyperbolic articles claiming that a cure for HIV is around the corner. The Telegraph in particular has developed quite a history of jumping the gun on this subject, with a notable blunder in 2013 and another in April 2016.

To be honest headlines are designed to grab the readers attention and the British media seem to be king of the headlines at times, shame the content is somewhat lacking. People need to take headlines and reports like this with a large pitch of salt.

Jim

[Ptrk3]

Another story on the "walk back" of erroneous HIV-cure claim:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/british-man-has-not-been-cured-hiv-not-yet-least-1584574?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=%2Frss%2Fyahoous%2Fnews&yptr=yahoo&ref=yfp

[zettainaoru]

Cure... mmm... might... may.... probably.
But Still, science making a HUGE progress!!!
We are stepping forward!!!!!!

These kind of news really gives hopes.

[xinyuan]

I completely agree.  The media have been rife with overhyping and overselling supposed cures.  So, the involved researchers' caution is most refreshing.  Please also keep in mind that he is only the first of 50 undergoing this trial to have finished the initial phase.  The other patients are still underway.

To put this patient's result into perspective, it would be like creating at minimum the Boston patients 1) on purpose (rather than a side effect for a dangerous cancer treatment) and 2) without as nasty a risk as a cancer treatment (wiping out the bone marrow for a stem cell transplant = 25% mortality).  Yes, vorinostat is a chemo agent.  Still, many would be satisfied with not taking ART even for short periods of time.  Even then, ART may still have some preventive effects from other HIV-associated long-term diseases in controllers (the research jury is still out on this one).

Most optimistically (and I realize much less likely), would be a proven intentional way of creating VISCONTI-like patients or patients similar to the Argentinian woman or to the Parisian girl.  I know 2 out of the 3 were in the setting of acute, not chronic, infections.

On that note, I want to know how long the patient has been positive.

[BKKKevin]

A spin on this...

If this drug protocol does not give a life long cure but rebounds after a year or two the drugs could be administered say every six months -  this would be better than the daily drug protocols we presently have ;-)

[leatherman]

If this drug protocol does not give a life long cure but rebounds after a year or two the drugs could be administered say every six months -  this would be better than the daily drug protocols we presently have ;-)

A combination of two long-acting injectable antiretrovirals, cabotegravir and rilpivirine, given once every 4 or 8 weeks, maintained viral suppression as well as a standard oral antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimen and appeared safe and well-tolerated, according to results from the LATTE 2 trial presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2016) taking place this week in Boston, USA.

http://www.aidsmap.com/Long-acting-injectable-cabotegravir-rilpivirine-works-well-as-HIV-maintenance-therapy/page/3038518/
^this is already in the works. While 6 months would be great, I'll be happy going from 3X a daily to one time every 60 days.

TheBody.com contributor David Duran said that friends and family keep forwarding him links or tagging him in posts. "It's incredibly frustrating because the majority of them, even with no malicious intent, don't actually read the article, but instead base it all off a misleading headline," he said. "For those of us that are heavily involved within the HIV world, these type of reports are incredibly infuriating because they are just not factually accurate or misrepresent what is actually occurring."

http://www.thebody.com/content/78523/infuriating-people-with-hiv-doctors-advocates-spea.html
I saved the newspaper clippings my mom sent me in 1993 about "the cure" that was just around the corner - and that was a couple years before HAART was even a "thing" saving all our lives. Two decades my friends and family have continued to send newspaper articles and now facebook posts and emails about "the cure" and for over two decades I have continued to tell them: "trust me, I keep track of these things and when there really is a cure, you can be sure you'll hear it from me first  "

[paintedroom]

@leatherman..i like your style..hard won i hazard..and deserved of course.

Hope all well,P.

[georgep77]

http://www.aidsmap.com/Long-acting-injectable-cabotegravir-rilpivirine-works-well-as-HIV-maintenance-therapy/page/3038518/
^this is already in the works. While 6 months would be great, I'll be happy going from 3X a daily to one time every 60 days.
http://www.thebody.com/content/78523/infuriating-people-with-hiv-doctors-advocates-spea.html
I saved the newspaper clippings my mom sent me in 1993 about "the cure" that was just around the corner - and that was a couple years before HAART was even a "thing" saving all our lives. Two decades my friends and family have continued to send newspaper articles and now facebook posts and emails about "the cure" and for over two decades I have continued to tell them: "trust me, I keep track of these things and when there really is a cure, you can be sure you'll hear it from me first  "

Leatherman my man, thanks for the info   

[Almost2late]

Still it's great news.....

https://youtu.be/cb5cD3zeJkE