Dr. Chris Peterson wins Young Investigator Award Special HIV Cure Prize (uses ZFN's,beats 2500 other abstracts)

Dr. Chris Peterson wins Young Investigator Award Special HIV Cure Prize

Dr. Chris Peterson of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Clinical Research Division will receive the Young Investigator Award Special HIV Cure Prize from the International AIDS Society, or IAS, and the French National Agency for AIDS Research, or ANRS, next month at an IAS conference in Vancouver, B.C.
His abstract was chosen from more than 2,500 submissions and singled out by judges for its “originality and vigor.”
His research involves removing blood stem cells from a preclinical model and using a gene editing technique involving zinc-finger nucleases, or ZFNs, to disrupt a receptor used as a doorway by most forms of HIV.  The modified stem cells were returned to repopulate the immune system.
“This is the first time that engraftment of gene-edited blood stem cells has been shown in an autologous transplantation setting in a clinically relevant model,” said Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem, a Fred Hutch stem cell transplant researcher who was senior author of the study. “This will have significant implications not only for the HIV field but also for gene editing in genetic blood disorders such as sickle cell disease.”
Current studies are using viruses to target genes to replace the receptor. This strategy would allow an even greater proportion of the HIV-resistant cells to be present to fight infection, the abstract stated.
Peterson is a staff scientist in Kiem’s laboratory, where his work is part of the Fred Hutch-based defeatHIV, one of three federally funded consortia nationwide investigating different strategies for an HIV cure.  Led by Kiem and Fred Hutch virologist Dr. Keith Jerome, defeatHIV seeks to modify an HIV patient’s own stem cells to mimic a genetic mutation called the CCR5 delta-32 deletion, which confers natural resistance to HIV. The mutation prevents CD4 cells – infection-fighting white blood cells that HIV targets – from expressing a receptor, called CCR5, on their surfaces. Without this receptor, it’s as though HIV is left standing at the door without a key to get in.
The approach is based on the only known case in which HIV has been cured, that of Timothy Ray Brown. In 2008 in Berlin, Brown received a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia. His doctor sought out a donor with two copies of the CCR5 mutation in what turned out to be a successful effort to also cure Brown’s HIV infection.
Peterson will present his paper at both the biennial IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention and the Towards an HIV Cure Symposium that precedes it. The meetings take place July 18-22. In addition to Peterson and Kiem, other authors include researchers from the University of Washington and Sangamo Biosciences in Richmond, California.
http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2015/06/good-news-ghajar-peterson-schwartz.html