“Latest Stem Cells News”

Drs. Scott Kitchen, Zoran Galic, Jerry Zack of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center and AIDS Institute and their colleagues demonstrated for the first time that human blood stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill HIV-infected cells. The process could potentially be used against a range of chronic viral diseases.

The study, published Dec. 7 in the-peer reviewed online journal PLoS ONE, provides proof-of-principle, a demonstration of feasibility, that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine.

“We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells,” said lead investigator Scott G. Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. “These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors.”

Gerhard Bauer, an American researcher and expert on ‘mother’ stem cells, during the 50th congress of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Francisco, announced that human testing for an AIDS treatment based on genetically modified stem cells could begin within 5 years. Bauer has been working for the past 10 years on modified stem cells that could repair strongly compromised immune systems in HIV patients. “For this reason the apparent success obtained by German researchers on an American patient with AIDS and leukemia reinforces the idea that we are on the right path.”

Last month the German researchers announced that their patient underwent a bone marrow transplant, introducing stem cells taken from a donor with a natural immunity to HIV, and after the operation he lived for 20 months with no sign of the AIDS virus. “The result does not surprise me,” added Bauer, the next director of the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures in Sacramento while presenting preliminary results obtained from mice at the American Society of Hematology announcing that ‘the first tests on human beings could begin within five years.’

Stem cell transplantation in a 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia has wiped out the virus from his body, the doctor of Berlin Charité Hospital confirms.
“The patient is fine,” said Dr. Gero Hutter, a haematologist at the Berlin Charité Hospital. “Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication.”

The doctor observed that using the stem cells from a donor who carries a unique gene mutation i.e. delta 32 ccr5 along with a tissue match, could now cure the patient from the HIV virus. Delta 32 ccr5 makes the cells resistant to HIV virus and this mutation is found in a little more than 1 percent of Caucasians.
Dr. Hutter told, “When the recipient got the new bone marrow, his cells could now block out the HIV, and, in effect, he was cured. Bone marrow transplants are high risk, so only lymphoma and leukemia patients take the risk to possibly cure their cancer.”

The study is published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.