Will cord blood help with HIV infection?
Transplantologists have announced a program of HIV treatment with the help of umbilical cord blood
At the end of 2015, the Spanish National Society of Transplantologists announced a program of HIV infection therapy by transplantation of specially selected umbilical cord blood samples. Treatment of the first patient is scheduled for January 2016.
The basis for this work was laid back in 2007, when an American diagnosed with acute leukemia, who lived in Berlin, underwent a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a CCR5 delta 32 immune cell mutation. As a result, the patient was cured of both leukemia and AIDS. This case became known as the treatment of the "Berlin patient".
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a virus that causes AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Once in the human body, HIV weakens the immune system, affecting certain cells designed to fight infections – T-lymphocytes, or CD4 cells. Over time, HIV destroys so many of these cells that the body can no longer protect itself from certain types of cancer, viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites. The diagnosis of AIDS is usually made several years after infection with HIV, when a person develops one or more serious diseases.
CCR5 is a protein on the surface of lymphocytes that plays an important role in the penetration of the pathogen of HIV infection into the cell. A mutation of the gene encoding this protein, delta 32, is known, which makes it impossible for the human immunodeficiency virus to attach to T–lymphocytes, and, accordingly, the owner of this protein turns out to be immune to infection. It is this property that makes donor material with this type of receptor especially valuable material for patients with HIV infection. The frequency of such a mutation in the world is no more than 1%.
In 2013, scientists from the USA and Spain performed 2 cord blood transplants for the treatment of patients with leukemia and lymphoma, and at the same time infected with HIV.
And now in Spain, the study plans to include 5 patients who need hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and are infected with HIV at the same time. For these purposes, 157 samples were taken from umbilical cord blood banks in Spain. The patients will be adults with HIV infection who are scheduled for donor unrelated transplantation for oncohematological disease. The researchers plan to start treating the first patient in January 2016 in Madrid. A similar study has been announced in the USA. They plan to treat 25 patients there.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
28.01.2015