AIDS: a new treatment could be a “revolution in immunization”

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Dr Erwann Loret explains how his experimental treatment offers hope for AIDS patients.

AIDS: an “incentive” treatment in the fight against the AIDS virus

There will be a cure for AIDS someday? A therapeutic vaccine from Marseille gives hope. Three years after the launch of clinical trials around this treatment, three of the nine patients treated with this vaccine and infected with HIV saw their infected cells become undetectable in the blood. Dr Erwann Loret, at the origin of this experiment, confirms that these results are “encouragement” but caution is needed not to jump to hasty conclusions. “In my intuition I feel that we will be able to talk about the hope of a cure when these patients undergo retro-seroconversion, when the immune system will no longer detect infected cells and reduce the level of antibodies. This moment is not far ahead, explains the scientist carefully, on Tuesday, March 15th.

This treatment also appears to be “rightly a revolution in vaccination“. Unlike usual vaccines, this one “uses a synthetic protein and there is no use of adjuvants”. In other words, it is not a matter of injecting harmless parts of the virus into the body to accelerate the disappearance of diseased cells. “It's a different approach to AIDS vaccination”, confirms Doctor Erwann Loret.

One million euros

Within the scope of this test, 46 patients under tritherapy has followed the protocol for a period of twelve months. To ensure its effectiveness, doctors also interrupted the two-month treatment. It was then time to verify that the virus had not reappeared in the form of a “Viremic rebound” that would not occur among volunteers who were receiving placebo.
These clinical trials will take place at the Clinical Research Center of the project hospital in Marseille, doctors were able to count on the financial support of the French start-up Biosantech and the through crowdfunding on the Internet. “Clinical trials are very expensive. The arrival of Biosantech was a true blessing since these tests cost more than one million euros,” recalls Dr Erwann Loret, who now hopes that other hospital centers will begin to apply this method and take advantage of this treatment and “verify the results”.

Translated from French with the precarious support of Babylon technology from the original written by MARC-OLIVIER FOGIEL , JULIEN ABSALON published on 15/03/2016 at 23:21 by Claudio Souza and Reviewed by Mara Macedo, on 18/03/2016