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Genetics and Health

HIV Gene Therapy

by Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD on December 29th, 2005

Sangamo BioSciences Inc. has developed a technology that disrupts the CCR5 gene - the gateway for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to enter immune system T-cells. They plan to begin a human clinical trials of its therapy in HIV patients in 2006.

Sangamo’s therapy would draw tens of millions of T-cells from a patient, disrupt the CCR5 gene in them, amplify the cells so there are about 1 billion of them and reinfuse them into the patient. Doing so would provide a reservoir of healthy and uninfectable T-cells that would fight both opportunistic infections and HIV itself. Once altered, those cells’ CCR5 genes are permanently modified.

MSNBC, December 25, 2005

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POSTED IN: Genetic Engineering, Genetics of Disease

4 opinions for HIV Gene Therapy

  • » HIV and Blog of the Week: Who’s Positive Genetics and Health
    Jan 1, 2006 at 8:03 pm

    […] For more information on HIV/AIDS, see HIV Gene Therapy. If you’d like to read more HIV POZ blogs, see HIV/AIDS Web Logs. […]

  • » BioGrid: Integrating Genetic Data Genetics and Health
    Jan 2, 2006 at 7:19 am

    […] One part of BioGrid is GoPubMed, an enhanced search of PubMed - a public database of biomedical literature. GoPubMed is an ontology-based literature search that shows the relationship between key concepts. To test it out, I keyed in CCR5. In the left hand column, it shows the key roles CCR5 plays in biological processes, as a ceullar component, and its molecular function with even more specific categories under each of these subheadings; these categories are called “GO Terms.” It also pulls the 100 most relevant articles and tags it with the GO Terms. The GO Terms are also highlighted in the abstracts. […]

  • vencson
    Jun 22, 2008 at 4:04 pm

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  • Mike
    Jul 1, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    Did this study really happen yet? What were the results? I just recently got diagnosed with HIV, am not on meds yet and wondering it this could help me still? I’d love to have some killer T-cell running around my body before meds. Or is this considered a med? with side-effects?

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