2023-12-01 20:16:00
There is “a challenge that fascinates” many scientists who have dedicated and are dedicating their studies to HIV: being able to eliminate the DNA of the virus from infected patients with a pair of ‘molecular scissors’, freeing them forever from therapies, which today must take for life to prevent HIV positivity from becoming a full-blown disease. Pasquale Ferrante is one of the researchers who worked to achieve this goal, this promise. Formerly a professor at the State University of Milan, the expert collaborated with Temple University in the USA on the development of a gene editing technique that was capable of cutting the HIV genome incorporated into that of cells. This line of studies has continued and today a human trial is underway in the United States. “I expect that we will be able to have significant data” on effectiveness “in 1-2 years”, Ferrante predicts to time.news Salute, taking stock of the new frontiers of the fight against AIDS on World AIDS Day.
“The trial, approved by the US regulatory body FDA, has passed phase 1 and now there are 3-4 centers in America that are facing the subsequent phases to see not only the safety, but also the effectiveness over time”, he updates the virologist. The experimental therapy involved in the trial is called ‘EBT-101’, it is the first based on Crispr for HIV infection (it would be administered by intravenous infusion). “It’s a future that could come true, that could possibly give the expected results – reasons Ferrante – Results that we welcomed with such enthusiasm when we saw this possibility. I think it will take at least a year or two” to have the decisive information. “The problem is that patients have the virus in cells that can also be the so-called viral ‘sanctuaries’ and to know for sure that the therapy is truly effective and that there are no viruses hidden elsewhere we will have to wait for this second and third phase to end of experimentation”.
To date, “the first phase ended with good results (the data were released at the end of October, ed.) and the second has just begun. It must be said – adds Ferrante – that for the moment the company that collaborates with Temple for the development and possibly future commercialization” of the therapy, i.e. the biotech company Excision BioTherapeutics, “works only in the United States and there is no short-term prospect that trials will also start in other countries”.
If this approach works, underlines the Italian scientist who is still an adjunct professor at Temple today, “a new era will open. Many positive people, despite knowing and seeing that their pathology is stable and that there are no symptoms if drugs are used currently available, they sometimes find themselves expressing the desire to solve their problem once and for all.”
As for the potential costs of a therapy of this type, based on the ‘cut and paste’ of DNA, Ferrante hopes they will not be stellar. “As is known, the new ultra-advanced therapies, even the Car-T therapies themselves for tumors, are all becoming individualized therapies with costs in some cases prohibitive. We will see how this therapy will be positioned in the future” if it proves effective. “I hope it doesn’t cost too much – concludes the expert – because otherwise there would be fewer patients” who could be treated.
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