The emergence of a new therapeutic AIDS vaccine

A team of researchers from the Spanish team stated that they have developed a therapeutic vaccine that can temporarily suppress the growth of HIV in infected patients.

The vaccine was developed using immune cells exposed to heat-inactivated HIV. The researchers tested 36 HIV carriers and obtained the best record of this type of treatment.

Research group member Felipe Garcia of the University Hospital of Barcelona said: “What we do is to give the immune system instructions to learn what it can't do in the natural world — to destroy the HIV virus.”

The researchers said that this therapeutic vaccine is not used to prevent disease, but to treat existing AIDS. It is very safe and can significantly reduce the amount of HIV virus detected in some patients. Related research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

After 12 weeks of clinical trials, HIV viral load decreased by more than 90% in 12 of the 22 vaccinated patients. Of the 11 patients who received the control injection, only 1 had similar results.

After 24 weeks, the effectiveness of the vaccine began to decline. In the remaining 20 vaccinated patients, 7 people had a 90% reduction in viral load. None of the 10 patients in the control group had a decrease in viral load.

The vaccine loses its effectiveness after one year, at which point the patient must resume their regular antiretroviral combination therapy.

The researchers say these results are similar to those obtained with a single antiretroviral drug blocking HIV growth.

"This is the most solid proof provided in the scientific literature, indicating that therapeutic vaccines are possible," the researchers said in a statement.

This vaccine allows patients to temporarily get rid of the daily use of multiple drugs, adhere to the daily medication for patients with difficulties, and in the long term will cause toxic side effects, and to pay a high economic cost.

"This investigation has opened up new avenues for carrying out other studies that ultimately achieve functional healing without the need for antiretroviral treatment for long-term or lifetime control of HIV replication," the researchers said.

“Although we have not yet achieved a functional cure, the results released today provide the possibility to obtain an optimal therapeutic vaccine or a combination strategy that encompasses the treatment of vaccines and may contribute to achieving this goal. "they said.

The research team said that they have spent 7 years to reach this point, and now they are working to improve the vaccine, and strive to combine it with other therapeutic vaccines in the next three to four years.

According to the latest statistics from the United Nations, the number of HIV-infected people in the world has risen from 33.5 million in 2010 to 34 million in 2011.