"Exciting Breakthrough" - New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains

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fountainhall

"Exciting Breakthrough" - New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains

Post by fountainhall »

The BBC is reporting a major advancement in finding a possible cure for HIV AIDS. Scientists have engineered an antibody that can prevent HIV infection in primates.
The work is a collaboration between the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. The International Aids Society said it was an "exciting breakthrough". Human trials will start in 2018 to see if it can prevent or treat infection . . .

Dr Gary Nabel, the chief scientific officer at Sanofi and one of the report authors, told the BBC News website: "They are more potent and have greater breadth than any single naturally occurring antibody that's been discovered."

The best naturally occurring antibodies will target 90% of HIV strains.

"We're getting 99% coverage, and getting coverage at very low concentrations of the antibody," said Dr Nabel.

Experiments on 24 monkeys showed none of those given the tri-specific antibody developed an infection when they were later injected with the virus. Dr Nabel said: "It was quite an impressive degree of protection" . . .

Prof Linda-Gail Bekker, the president of the International Aids Society, told the BBC: "This paper reports an exciting breakthrough. These super-engineered antibodies seem to go beyond the natural and could have more applications than we have imagined to date.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41351159
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Re: "Exciting Breakthrough" - New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains

Post by Undaunted »

I remember the begining of the "Gay Plague", I remember Rock Hudson being put on a plane to Paris for whatever only to die and so many untold names to folllow and I can't believe how any years have passed and there is still no vaccine!
"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
fountainhall

Re: "Exciting Breakthrough" - New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains

Post by fountainhall »

I also remember those days, the growing fear leading to panic as the facts of the new illness became known, and the numbers who began to die in great numbers. I remember, too, that right wing moralists in the Republican Reagan administration sat on their collective fat asses and did all but nothing to combat what was tagged as a gay disease long after it was known that it had spread to the general population. If the CDC's begging for additional funds had been met in those days, perhaps there would now be a vaccine and millions need not have died. One of history's "if only . . ." Ironically, Reagan never dared mention the word AIDS until after his old mate Rock Hudson died.

I also remember seeing Reagan's conservative Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, give a talk on AIDS on television when I was in San Francisco. He actually talked about the danger of rimming! I'll bet his colleagues gave him hell for that little nugget. Yet he continuously battled the administration and I think it's true to say he did more than anyone in that administration to further discussion on all aspects of AIDS.
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