Fighting AIDS with AIDS

In some cases the best way to fight a fire is to light a fire of your own. But could the best way to fight AIDS possibly be with AIDS?

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are testing the idea that a modified strain of the HIV virus, called a lentivirus, could be turned into a sort of anti-AIDS guided missile that could directly target the HIV virus already in patients. Naturally safety was the primary concern.

The Scientist reports:

One safety concern with using lentiviruses as gene delivery vectors isthat they might form replication-competent lentiviruses, but Levine andhis colleagues found no evidence of this in any of the patients.
Another concern is vector mobilization,
which the researchers saw in the first 60 days after injection, but notafter that. This mobilization probably doesn't mean the vector isn'tsafe, said Richard Sutton
of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who was not involved in thestudy, but he acknowledged that it is "a little bit concerning. Usuallywe don't like these vectors to jump around once they're inside aperson."

While safe, the therapy still has a long way to go before it could be used for treatment. In the trial on 5 patients, only one showed a significant decrease in their viral load.