Company makes HIV breakthrough (From The Oxford Times)

Company makes HIV breakthrough

9:46pm Tuesday 11th November 2008 in Search

An Oxfordshire company is set to begin clinical trials on a potential cure for AIDS, it emerged last night.

Adaptimmune Limited, along with professors at the Universities of Cardiff and Pennsylvania, have engineered new immune cells, which can destroy HIV infected cells in a laboratory.

Now the company, based in Milton Park, Abingdon, wants to begin clinical trials to see how effective the cells will be on patients infected with HIV.

The problem facing scientists is the ability of HIV to mutate when it enters the human body, making it impossible to cure with conventional medicine.

Researchers believe that this chameleon-like ability may still prevent the virus from being completely destroyed, however, each time the virus is forced to mutate it appears to become less powerful.

Cardiff University professor Andy Sewell said: "In the face of our engineered assassin cells, HIV will either die or be forced to change its disguise again, weakening itself along the way.

"We’d prefer the first option, but I suspect we’ll see the latter. Even if we do only cripple the virus, this will still be a good outcome as it is likely to become a much slower target and be easier to pick off.

“Forcing the virus to a weaker state would likely reduce its capacity to transmit within the population and may help slow or even prevent the onset of AIDS in individuals."

Pending regulatory approval, clinical trials using engineered killer T-cells will begin next year.