New step in research HIV eradication. A treatment with monoclonal antibodies (artificial proteins of the immune system created in the laboratory) has managed to control the disease without the need to take drugs antiretrovirals daily and thus avoiding side effects that these cause.
The magazine ‘Nature’ has published this Wednesday the results of a small clinical Trial, in which 19 patients from the USA have participated, prove that monoclonal antibodies can work “as well” as current antiretroviral therapy. As the researcher from IrsiCaixa and the Germans Trias i Pujol Health Science Research Institute (IGTP) explains to this newspaper Julia Blanco, the trial has administered for six months two monoclonal antibodies (3BNC-117 and 10-1074) to people with HIV “in two contexts”: in a first group of people, standard antiretrovirals were eliminated and replaced by antibodies; in the second, monoclonal antibodies were given to people who were not on treatment.
“Two thirds of these people obtained good results and in a third part the antibodies did not work at all because these people already had virus resistant to the antibodies”, says Blanco. For the researcher, the “Greater relevance” One of these data is that they show that monoclonal antibodies can work “over a long period of time.” The trial (with a “reduced” number of people, the researcher specifies) consisted of administering six injections of antibodies over six months, although research is being done to administer two a year (one every six months).
drawbacks
Still, there are drawbacks. For example, that the molecule of the monoclonal antibody is “a thousand times larger” than that of any normal drug and, therefore, its production is not easy, since it must be done in a biological Laboratory, not chemical. Other: that the administration of the antibodies is intravenous, which requires the patient to move to the hospital.
But still, the research does show that HIV can be controlled without antiretrovirals. “In addition, the monoclonal antibodies used in the trial are already a few years old. New ones are now being developed. second generation They will be better than these. That opens the door for us to continue investigating,” says Blanco.
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It also supposes a progress in the fight against AIDS. “There are people with little adherence to treatment, so it would be good to administer an antibody every six months and they would be undetectable,” adds the researcher. He himself stresses that monoclonal antibodies are “very interesting” because antiretroviral therapy “does not cure the infection”, While the antibodies “destroy infected cells.”
IrsiCaixa is investigating how to use these antibodies not only to treat the infection, but to eradicate HIV.