Health Maximalist
1d
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For decades, HIV cure research has chased one of medicine’s hardest goals: stopping the virus without lifelong daily drugs. Now, a new study in Science Translational Medicine suggests a gene-therapy strategy may push that goal closer at least in monkeys.
Researchers used an AAV vector to deliver genetic instructions for leronlimab, an antibody that blocks CCR5, a cell receptor HIV often uses to enter immune cells. In rhesus macaques infected with SHIV, an HIV-like virus, six animals achieved long-term stringent or partial viral control after producing enough antibody to fully occupy CCR5 receptors.
This is not a full cure, and it has not been proven in humans. Some animals developed antidrug antibodies, and the researchers emphasized that consistent antibody expression remains a major challenge. But the idea is powerful: instead of repeatedly giving medication, the body could be engineered to manufacture its own viral shield.
If one gene-therapy shot could one day replace lifelong HIV medication, would you take it even if long-term safety was still being studied?
Source: Helen L. Wu et al. ,Adeno-associated virus gene therapy–mediated CCR5 blockade suppresses virus replication long term in SHIV-infected macaques.Sci. Transl. Med.18,eadw1976(2026)
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=13116948...ho-died-we
1d
·
For decades, HIV cure research has chased one of medicine’s hardest goals: stopping the virus without lifelong daily drugs. Now, a new study in Science Translational Medicine suggests a gene-therapy strategy may push that goal closer at least in monkeys.
Researchers used an AAV vector to deliver genetic instructions for leronlimab, an antibody that blocks CCR5, a cell receptor HIV often uses to enter immune cells. In rhesus macaques infected with SHIV, an HIV-like virus, six animals achieved long-term stringent or partial viral control after producing enough antibody to fully occupy CCR5 receptors.
This is not a full cure, and it has not been proven in humans. Some animals developed antidrug antibodies, and the researchers emphasized that consistent antibody expression remains a major challenge. But the idea is powerful: instead of repeatedly giving medication, the body could be engineered to manufacture its own viral shield.
If one gene-therapy shot could one day replace lifelong HIV medication, would you take it even if long-term safety was still being studied?
Source: Helen L. Wu et al. ,Adeno-associated virus gene therapy–mediated CCR5 blockade suppresses virus replication long term in SHIV-infected macaques.Sci. Transl. Med.18,eadw1976(2026)
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=13116948...ho-died-we
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