Time Health

There Is No Cure for HIV—But Scientists May Be Getting Closer

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Time, March 8, 2018
By: Alice Park

Time HealthCure isn’t a word normally used in the context of AIDS. For most of the 35 years since HIV, the virus responsible for the disease, was first identified, doctors have viewed the notion of a cure as more fantasy than fact.

That’s because HIV is a virus unlike any other. It disables the very immune cells that are supposed to destroy it and also sequesters itself in the body’s cells, staging the ultimate deadly ambush whenever the immune defense’s guard comes down, months or sometimes even years later.… Full article

HIV Prevention Could Need Cocktail Of Antibodies

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CommonHealth, September 22, 2017
By: Cynthia Fernandez, CommonHealth intern

It takes a cocktail of drugs to treat HIV. It could take a cocktail of antibodies to prevent HIV as well, suggests a study by Boston-based researchers published this week in Science Translational Medicine.

I spoke to researcher Dr. Dan Barouch, professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School (who recently published work on a ‘mosaic’ HIV vaccine as well.) Here’s our conversation, lightly edited.

Can you sum up your study?

What we saw is that a cocktail of antibodies is required to protect monkeys… Full article

By Ganging Up, HIV Antibodies May Defeat the Virus

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Science News, September 20th, 2017
By:  Aimee Cunningham

For certain HIV antibodies, having a buddy or two makes a big difference in the fight against the virus.

Combining the antibodies, called broadly neutralizing antibodies, may stop more strains of HIV than any single one can do alone, two new studies suggest. A “triple-threat” antibody molecule can bind to three different spots on the virus, researchers report online September 20 in Science. In Science Translational Medicine, a second team describes a cocktail of two single antibodies that each target a different region of the virus. Both methods prevented infection from multiple strains of an HIV-like virus in monkeys.

“We have known for many years that broadly neutralizing antibodies are extremely powerful antibodies,” says molecular biologist Nancy Haigwood… Full article

New therapeutic vaccine approach holds promise for HIV remission →

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Science Daily, November 9th, 2016

A study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), in collaboration with scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and Gilead Sciences, Inc., has demonstrated that combining an experimental vaccine with an innate immune stimulant may help lead to viral remission in people living with HIV. In animal trials, the combination decreased levels of viral DNA in peripheral blood and lymph nodes, and improved viral suppression and delayed viral rebound following discontinuation of anti-retroviral therapy (ART). The research team’s findings appeared online today in the journal Nature.  Full article