Western University researchers are a step closer to finding an effective and affordable HIV treatment that could cure millions of people worldwide.
Eric Arts, a professor at the university's Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, along with University of Bristol Senior Lecturer Jamie Mann, are leading a team of international researchers in developing the targeted treatment strategy. It uses a first of its kind HIV-virus-like-particle (HLP), said to be 100 times more effective than other therapeutics for people living with chronic HIV on combined antiretroviral therapy.
While traditional treatments only suppress the virus, requiring patients to take pills for life, the HLP treatment increases immune responses that target traces of the virus hiding dormant inside of cells. It is delivered in an intramuscular injection, similar to the seasonal flu vaccine.
"The development of this HIV cure was ten years in the making but with strong support from our collaborators in the U.S., Canada and Uganda, we have observed a striking ability of HLP to drive out the last remnants of HIV-1, which we hope will provide an affordable cure for all,” said Arts, who is a Canada research chair in HIV pathogenesis and viral control. “To live HIV-free is a goal for the 39 million infected. It is also the priority of the UN and WHO to end the HIV pandemic by 2030.”
Researchers used blood samples from 32 participants with chronic HIV from the U.S., Uganda, and Canada who had been receiving antiretroviral therapy for approximately 13 years to study the effects of HLP. Their findings have been published in the journal Emerging Microbes and Infections.
Current studies aim to confirm a lack of toxicity in the treatment, before researchers turn their attention to human clinical trials.