An HIV vaccine made in Barcelona allows better control of the virus without antiretrovirals
GAYLES.TV.- A therapeutic vaccine against HIV developed in Barcelona improves the control of the virus in infected people when they stop taking antiretrovirals. The prototype has been designed by IrsiCaixa, Lluita Fund against AIDS y Aelix Therapeutics, a biotech company.
40% of the participants in the first clinical trial managed to go six months without treatment. According to the researchers, it is a first step towards obtaining a treatment that helps to contain the HIV without the patients having to take antiretrovirals every day.
This is a first study, with 45 attendees HIV positive, which has been carried out in the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital de Badalona. Some were given placebo and others the therapeutic vaccine, intended for people when they have already been infected.
Historical advance
All had antiretroviral treatment stopped. And all of them had the virus re-emerged, but one 40% of those vaccinated could go 6 months without this treatment. Instead, only a 8% of those who have received placebo get it. None of these participants had genetic factors that predispose them to spontaneously control the HIV.
Christian brander, scientific director of AELIX Therapeutics and co-author of the vaccine highlights that «until today no strategy in the cure of HIV has managed to keep the virus under control for so long and in so many people«.
These encouraging results indicate scientists are on the right track. «When the virus begins to break out, the immune response that follows is much more effective in vaccinated patients than in unvaccinated ones. So, it is a first sign that the design of the vaccine is optimal and that if we manage to improve this response, make it bigger, we could still really achieve a functional cure, which is the goal.«, Comments Beatriz Mothe, researcher doctor of the IrsiCaixa and co-author of the vaccine.
Photographer: IrsiCaixa
