Hey remember Truvada, that HIV drug that keeps negative folks from catching the virus? Turns out the $12,000-a-year drug isn’t winning over doctors, who don’t like the idea that HIV-negative men and women would be taking a drug that can cause kidney damage, among other things, just to stay negative. Especially when there’s a nearly full-proof way of staying negative: don’t share needles and always wear a condom! But that doesn’t mean This Week In STDs is all bad news for drugmakers: half of all men may be carrying HPV, the virus that can cause anal cancer (and cervical cancer in women). So let’s start really pushing Gardasil even harder.
badlydrawnbear
This isn’t news … The news from the conference is Sangamo’s “Functional Cure” for HIV/AIDS which is getting virtually no coverage.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2011/02/sangamo-shoots-up-on-hiv-data.html
Tiny Sangamo BioSciences Inc.’s potential “functional cure” for HIV is getting big attention in advance of a major AIDS scientific meeting.
http://www.aidsmeds.com/articles/HIV_Sangamo_CCR5_2581_19952.shtml
SB-728-T, a gene therapy designed to knock out the CCR5 receptor on CD4 cells, protects and increases CD4s in patients experiencing poor immunologic recovery while on antiretroviral (ARV) therapy, according to preliminary Phase I study data reported on Monday, February 28, at the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston. The new results, reported by Jay Lalezari, MD, are among the first from a human study illustrating the therapeutic—and curative—potential of this novel approach being developed by Sangamo BioSciences.