Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem and Paula Cannon have received a $12.6 million Dollar grant from the NIH for additional work in stem cells. I have confirmed that Sangamo BioSciences (SGMO) is an industry partner in this project. Here is the Hutch press release:
Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem co-PI on $12.6M grant to study stem cell therapy for HIV
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem is the co-principal investigator for a new, $12.6 million grant over five years from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute – a division of the National Institutes of Health – to research next-generation hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy for HIV control and eradication.A stem cell transplant researcher in the Clinical Research Division, Kiem is co-director of the Fred Hutch-based defeatHIV, a public-private consortium of researchers investigating the use of genetically modified stem cells to cure HIV.
Also co-principal investigator on the new project is Dr. Paula Cannon, an associate professor of molecular microbiology and immunology, pediatrics, biochemistry and molecular biology at University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and a member of the defeatHIV consortium.
“As the title [of the new project] says, it really gets into the next-generation gene editing but also into studying the role and mechanism of allogeneic transplantation in HIV eradication,” Kiem said.
To date, only one person in the world has been cured of HIV – Timothy Ray Brown, also known as “the Berlin patient” after the city in which he was treated. The Seattle-born Brown received a stem cell transplant in Germany in 2007 to treat acute myeloid leukemia. His German doctor decided to try to also cure Brown’s HIV infection by finding a stem cell donor who carried two copies of a rare gene mutation that protects against HIV infection.
Using Brown’s case as a blueprint, defeatHIV plans to take an HIV-infected patient’s own stem cells and knock out or disable the gene that acts as the HIV doorway, and then return the modified cells to the patient. Researchers elsewhere are looking at similar therapies that involve genetically modified T cells rather than stem cells.
Researchers are still trying to tease out which of several factors, independently or in combination, contributed to Brown’s cure. Before his transplant, he underwent conditioning, in which his own bone marrow was destroyed by intensive chemotherapy and whole-body irradiation. His doctor then used a marrow donor with the protective gene mutation. Additionally, any remaining HIV-infected cells may have been attacked by his new immune system, a process known as graft-vs.-host disease that plays a role in curing leukemia.
These are the questions that Kiem and Cannon will address in their new project, which is funded until 2020.
To date, only one person in the world has been cured of HIV – Timothy Ray Brown, also known as “the Berlin patient” after the city in which he was treated. The Seattle-born Brown received a stem cell transplant in Germany in 2007 to treat acute myeloid leukemia. His German doctor decided to try to also cure Brown’s HIV infection by finding a stem cell donor who carried two copies of a rare gene mutation that protects against HIV infection.
Using Brown’s case as a blueprint, defeatHIV plans to take an HIV-infected patient’s own stem cells and knock out or disable the gene that acts as the HIV doorway, and then return the modified cells to the patient. Researchers elsewhere are looking at similar therapies that involve genetically modified T cells rather than stem cells.
Researchers are still trying to tease out which of several factors, independently or in combination, contributed to Brown’s cure. Before his transplant, he underwent conditioning, in which his own bone marrow was destroyed by intensive chemotherapy and whole-body irradiation. His doctor then used a marrow donor with the protective gene mutation. Additionally, any remaining HIV-infected cells may have been attacked by his new immune system, a process known as graft-vs.-host disease that plays a role in curing leukemia.
These are the questions that Kiem and Cannon will address in their new project, which is funded until 2020.
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