Genetically Engineered White Blood Cells Could Be the Future of HIV Treatment
6th March 2014
Scientists have successfully modified the white blood cells of 12 patients living with HIV, making their cells resistant to the retrovirus and improving the study participants’ overall ability to fight off infection. The researchers achieved this result through a gene editing technique, described today in The New England Journal of Medicine.
In the study, scientists extracted white blood cells, called CD4 T cells, from the participants’ blood. They then modified these cells by removing the gene responsible for the production of a protein called CCR5. The CCR5 protein is what allows HIV to enter white bloods cells in the first place, so its removal conveyed resistance. After verifying that nothing else had been altered within the cells, the researchers returned them — 10 billion of them — to the patients via blood transfusion. “The modified [white blood] cells survive longer in the presence of HIV, which we proved by stopping [antiretroviral] therapy in some patients,” says Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease physician at the University of Pennsylvania and study co-author.