AIDS, a new procedure is being tested in Italy that aims to eliminate HIV DNA from patients to prevent HIV from evolving into the actual disease
Eliminate HIV DNA from patients infected with the AIDS virus with a pair of ‘molecular scissors’, freeing them forever from the therapies they now have to take for life to prevent HIV from becoming a full-blown disease. This is the goal of the genetic editing technique developed at the American Temple University by Kamel Khalili, in collaboration with the Pasquale Ferrante group of the State University of Milan. The US drug agency Fda has approved its use and the first human trial can start. The perspective opened by this ‘cut-and-paste’ of DNA is revolutionary: “Eradicating the genome of the virus from that of infected cells”. In other words, heal them.
In the last 7 years – recall from UniMi – Khalili and his team from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine of Temple University in Philadelphia have developed and perfected, also with the Italian team of Ferrante of the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the Milanese state university, a technology of gene-editing based on Crispr ‘Nobel scissors’ for the treatment of HIV infection. During years of preclinical studies, Khalili, together with colleagues from Temple University and Ferrante, have developed the drug EBT-101 “capable of effectively eradicating the proviral HIV DNA from the genomes of various cells and tissues – explain the scientists – including human cells. infected with HIV and cells and tissues of humanized mice “. A “potentially revolutionary” therapy, which “was recently accepted in an experimental phase by the US FDA” and which “could become the first functional cure for chronic HIV infection”.
Clinical phase 1-2 can start, a Californian company will manage the studies
The approval of EBT-101 as an investigational drug therefore paves the way for the first phase 1-2 clinical trials of a Crispr-based gene editing therapy for HIV infection. “The possibility of testing this treatment in people living with HIV is an exciting development and is certainly of interest to millions of people,” comments Ferrante. The clinical trials – reads a note – will be started and managed by the Californian company Excision BioTherapeutics Inc., which was one of the main collaborators of Temple University in the development of Crispr-based systems for the treatment of HIV.