B-cell HIV therapy: a new study

Researchers from Tel Aviv claim that their new B-cell therapy can cure HIV with just a single injection. The drug appeared to be effective during early animal testing. The results have been published in the journal Nature.

The new B-cell treatment makes use of the CRISPR system (think of it like cut, copy and paste on your computer), to detect, cut and edit type-B leukocytes, which are responsible for the production of antibodies against viruses. In this case, the experts used two adeno-associated viral vectors, one of which encodes Staphylococcus aureus Cas9 (saCas9) and the other -3BNC117, antibody against HIV.

Following the introduction of these vectors to mice, researchers recorded successful editing of B-cells, which leads to memory preservation and secretion of bNAb antibodies at neutralising titers of up to 6.8 μg/ml.

"All animals who were treated had a large amount of desired antibodies in their blood. We isolated these antibodies and made sure that they really effectively neutralised HIV in the laboratory," says Dr Adi Barzel, one of the authors of the study.

The authors of the study expect that in the coming years they will be able to use this method to product treatments for HIV and other infectious diseases - including some cancers.