Stem Cells Therapy for HIV treatment

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UC Davis Health System researchers found the ability of stem cells to fight against virus that causes AIDS. According to the article, the UC Davis Health team demonstrated the efficiency of anti-HIV stem cells in mice to simulate infected patients with the same conditions. By replacing the immune system with stem cells "engineered with a triple combination of HIV-resistant genes" and using gene therapy techniques and viral vectors, they proved their technique to be capable of replicating a normally function human immune system by "protecting and expanding HIV-resistant immune cells". To reduce the differences between mice and human patient's immune system, researchers parallel mice's immunity with genetically modified human blood stem cells.

This innovative stem cell therapy contains the following resulting combination vector: 

• a human/rhesus macaque TRIM5 isoform, which disrupts HIV from uncoating in the cytoplasm
• a CCR5 short hairpin RNA (shRNA), which prevents certain strains of HIV from attaching to target cells
• a TAR decoy, which stops HIV genes from being expressed inside of the cell by soaking up a critical protein needed for HIV gene expression

The modified stem cells were directly transferred into the infected mice with HIV. Later on, they provided data and results that confirm the success of the study. Infected mice showed significance improvement on their immunity: "HIV-resistant genes were protected from infection and survived in the face of a viral challenge, maintaining normal human CD4 levels". Author explains that CD4+ T-cells are specialized immune cells that HIV attacks and make copies from them. 

In 2007 Timothy Ray Brown, a positive HIV patient and also known as the Berlin Patient, received a stem cell transplant as a part of a lengthy treatment course of leukemia. After several and extensive tests, results have shown that the transplanted stem cells cure the HIV, and his Doctors believe that “cure of HIV infection have been achieved”.

In my opinion, this study opens another path to understand the many potential tools of Stem Cells and how important they are for future research. It surprises me every day how useful stem cells can be and knowing that it can treat patients with AIDS amazes me a lot. Although, I still believe we have not exploited enough the stem cells, thus there will be more innovative stem cell therapy for today's non curable diseases.