GLASGOW, United Kingdom – The possibility of controlling HIV without eradicating the virus is a hot new area of research, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said here during the opening session of HIV Drug Therapy 2016.
In fact, he presented results from a study of an antibody against the cell receptor alpha4beta7 integrin, the homing receptor for CD4-positive T-cells, earlier this month at the HIV Research for Prevention meeting in Chicago.
In that study, monkeys infected with the simian version of HIV were treated with antiretroviral therapy. They were then given the antibody and treatment was discontinued.
Almost 2 years later, the monkeys “have replication-competent virus but they have no viremia,” Dr Fauci reported. “I have no idea what the mechanism of that is, but that’s something we’re really pursuing.”
The National Institutes of Health recently started an exploratory open-label study of vedolizumab – the commercially available version of that antibody – in human subjects.
“We entered the first patient in August and, hopefully, by the end of 2017 or early 2018, we will have some answers,” said Dr Fauci.