A dendritic cell
PART ONE
Although the decrease is not sufficient, the first therapeutic AIDS vaccine, designed from the dendritic cells of the actual patients by the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona-IDIBAPS in the framework of the HIVACAT, the Catalan programme for the development of therapeutic vaccines and prevention against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), has achieved a significant response in the majority of patients.
The trial I results of the study (three more will come), which counted on an international collaboration with teams from France, the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtriére and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris/INSERM, and the USA, the National Institute of Cancer in Maryland, have been just published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The final aim of the therapeutic vaccine is to minimize the use and to avoid a life long treatment with antiretroviral drugs that, because of their expensive and a life long administration, bring about a great economic burden. Besides, there is no experience over the long term and it is not known if the treatments could bring about resistance, which they happen to do if not well taken, while some of them have proved to bring about side effects (for instance cardiovascular diseases.
“AIDS is unique among the infectious diseases since it is the only one that we cannot cure in spite of having very good drugs”, says Teresa Gallart, immunologist at the Hospital Clinic and one of the 17 authors of the study (9 women and 8 men).
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