Tests on cell therapy to fight HIV
Researchers have developed a new "assassin cell" therapy for treating HIV which involves engineering the patient's own immune system to fight the virus more effectively.The therapy - which has proved effective in laboratory tests using human cell cultures - will be tested in a clinical trial of 35 patients with advanced HIV infection that is due to start next summer.Efforts to find a traditional vaccine against HIV - the virus that causes Aids - have so far drawn a blank. "HIV mutates so quickly," said Dr Bent Jakobsen at Adaptimmune, the company in Oxford that is developing the new approach. "Gradually it gets better and better at escaping the detection of the immune system."Jakobsen and his colleagues began to pursue a different approach after investigating a patient who had resisted his HIV infection particularly effectively. "When we tested the T cells from this patient, it looked as if he was...
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