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Per latest Sangamo BioSciences pipeline, Gates just plunked down 100,000 to try this in one procedure instead of removing and re-injecting your own cells, they would do it inside of you while you wait. McImmune is objective. Trials grew to almost 40 patients in all stages, counts, meds resistive, no meds, AIDS, name it.
The good news is about a dozen more have undergone a feasible version of the Berlin patient's treatment. Sangamo Sciences have been able to take your own T-cells sample, modify them so the gene for immunity is set, grow huge numbers of them (10's of billions) and re-inject. A scalable process to market this has been developed. The people who took part, all had grown new cd4 cells immune to the virus, and they migrated to the gut linings where HIV hides. Then Goodnight HIV.
bob
The alteration process used to change genes in T cells to "immune" use CCR5 "attachment" or "receptor" sites.. means the point on the T cell where HIV can grab on. Most HIV uses this site. A small percentage uses CXCR4 site. There's no reason (I can see) that the gene for that site could not also be tweaked to be immune as easily as CCR5, making the whole cell immune to all of HIV. It should not affect the other functions of the cell significantly, either.
June 16, 2011 • redmond, wa