Breakthrough: Vaccine clears simian version of HIV out of monkeys

Yea, I know, too soon, yada, yada, yada... ...but this is the first time I've heard of anything actually eradicating the virus in a manner that might be field deployable.

I've taken the liberty of offering some rough English translations for the medical'ese in the piece.

... Here we show that regardless of the route of challenge, RhCMV/SIV vector-elicited immune responses control SIVmac239 after demonstrable lymphatic and haematogenous viral dissemination, and that replication-competent SIV persists in several sites for weeks to months.

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[Translation: AIDS is crafty and finds all kind of nooks and cranies to hide in]

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Over time, however, protected RM lost signs of SIV infection, showing a consistent lack of measurable plasma- or tissue-associated virus using ultrasensitive assays, and a loss of T-cell reactivity to SIV determinants not in the vaccine. Extensive ultrasensitive quantitative PCR and quantitative PCR with reverse transcription analyses of tissues from RhCMV/SIV vector-protected RM necropsied 69–172 weeks after challenge did not detect SIV RNA or DNA sequences above background levels

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[Translation: over time, no trace of the virus could be found in any of those usual sneaky hiding places]

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, and replication-competent SIV was not detected in these RM by extensive co-culture analysis of tissues or by adoptive transfer of 60 million haematolymphoid cells to naive RM. These data provide compelling evidence for progressive clearance of a pathogenic lentiviral infection,

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[Translation: we shot uninfected monkeys full of tissue from the infected/treated monkeys and they didn't subsequently get infected.]

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and suggest that some lentiviral reservoirs may be susceptible to the continuous effector memory T-cell-mediated immune surveillance elicited and maintained by cytomegalovirus vectors...

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[Translation: This seems to work on persistent viruses like HIV and may also work on other persistent viruses good at hiding, like Herpes]

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posted by Purp at 09:54 AM

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