Australian Scientists Stumble Across HIV Therapy

Australian scientists set out to create a test to analyze how well an animal's immune system fights HIV, but accidentally developed what they hope may turn out to be an AIDS treatment.

Stephen Kent, of the University of Melbourne's Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Australian National University colleagues extracted blood from laboratory animals and coated the cells with HIV peptide markers. When they injected the peptide-coated blood back into the animals, they found it triggered a significant immune response. "When we analyzed HIV-specific immunity in the weeks following ... a marked enhancement of virus-specific immunity was induced," said Kent.

The research team has successfully tested the method in mice and monkeys; the scientists hope to begin human trials in Sydney and Melbourne within two years. These would involve treating a volunteer's blood with peptides found on the surface of cells infected by HIV, then injecting the treated blood back into the volunteer. Dubbed Overlapping Peptide Autologous Cells (OPAL) by the researchers, the therapy could be administered a few times a year, said Kent. The National Health and Medical Research Council has provided $500,000 Australian (US$391,773) to help develop a human study.

Kent said the discovery raises the hope that HIV infection could be "kept at bay by some sort of immune therapy." In addition, the therapy was effective even against drug-resistant forms of the virus.

The full report, "Enhanced Cellular Immunity in Macaques Following a Novel Peptide Immunotherapy," was published in the Journal of Virology (2005;79(6):3748-3757).

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