Using technology related to the bone marrow transplant that recently cured a man of HIV, New Scientist reports that it might soon be possible to eradicate HIV from a person without a bone marrow transplant:
Imagine going into hospital with HIV and receiving a single treatment that knocks the virus on the head for good. That dream may come true sooner than we thought following a flurry of progress in gene therapy.
. . . [the biotech company] Sangamo makes artificial versions of natural enzymes called zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), which zero in on and disrupt any genes you choose.
Sangamo plans to take blood samples from 12 patients and extract CD4 cells. It will then add a harmless virus to the cell carrying genes that code for the ZFNs. The altered CD4 cells produce the ZFNs, which sabotage the CCR5 gene [the HIV door-handle protein]. The ZFNs and the virus are then washed away and the genetically modified cells injected back into the patient.
Although such a patient will still have many CD4 cells infected with HIV, if the engineered cells don’t become infected they should replicate faster and live longer than the others, and eventually become the dominant CD4 cells. This is exactly what happened when Sangamo researchers gave HIV-infected mice altered CD4 cells.
Gregory says that in the long term, it might be even more effective to extract and modify a different type of cell, called CD34 cells. Since they are stem cells, they can become every type of white blood cell, so this would eventually make the patient’s entire immune system resistant to HIV, which would be closer to the German leukaemia patient’s experience.
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