Experimental therapy kept patient's HIV level low patient

The patient interrupted his antiviral medications after infection-fighting cells that are targets of the virus were treated with the Sangamo product. His viral levels didn't rise for six weeks, two weeks to four weeks later than typical patients who halt medication, Richmond, California-based Sangamo said today in a statement.

The therapy uses an engineered protein called a zinc finger nuclease to try and neutralize a receptor called CCR5 that HIV uses to enter and infect immune cells. This approach aims to replicate the immunity to HIV infection enjoyed by 1 percent to 2 percent of people whose own CCR5 genes are mutated.

The zinc finger technology provides a totally new approach to HIV/AIDS with the aim of providing a reservoir of functional T-cells that are resistant to infection by HIV and available to fight opportunistic infections. Dale Ando, Sangamo's chief medical officer, said in the statement. These data are an early indication that this may be possible.

Last year, researchers described a German patient with HIV who became resistant to the virus after receiving a bone marrow transplant from a donor who carried the CCR5 mutation. Scientists are searching for ways to mimic that experience without putting patients through the risks of a bone marrow transplant, which can cause life-threatening infections.

10-Patient Study

The patient is the first of ten to be treated in a clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania, Sangamo's Chief Executive Officer Edward Lanphier said in a Jan. 14 interview at the JPMorgan healthcare conference in San Francisco. A second 10-patient study is being conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, he said.

The findings were presented at a medical meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Carl June, the leader of the University of Pennsylvania study, Sangamo said in the statement.

In October, the City of Hope, a nonprofit treatment center in Los Angeles, and Sangamo were awarded a US$14.6 million grant by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to develop this approach to AIDS treatment.

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