Speakers Include:
Paula Cannon
John Zaia
Dale Ando
The City of West Hollywood is co-sponsoring the upcoming HIV Matters town hall event — Countdown to a Cure: California Leads the Way. The quarterly HIV Matters town hall forum is a collaborative effort between AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and community partners. Each HIV Matters forum focuses on updates regarding HIV treatment, prevention, and care efforts in Los Angeles County and worldwide.
The upcoming town hall will take place on Thursday, July 30, 2015 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Plummer Park’s Fiesta Hall, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. Dinner will be served at 5:30 p.m.; an educational program will begin at 6:35 p.m. The event is free and is open to the public.
The forum will bring together members of the HIV community and leading researchers to discuss clinical trials that are now underway, and other approaches that are being investigated to cure AIDS. Speakers will include Paula Cannon, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Keck School of Medicine of USC; David Hardy, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Calimmune; John Zaia, M.D., Chair of Virology, City of Hope, Duarte; Dale Ando, M.D., Vice President of Therapeutic Development and Chief Medical Officer, Sangamo BioSciences; and Jeff Sheehy, CIRM Board Patient Advocate Member for HIV/AIDS.
The City of West Hollywood, incorporated in 1984, has been disproportionally impacted by HIV and AIDS. It was the first city to fund services for most of the local organizations established in the mid-1980s in the early response to the AIDS crisis. Today, the City of West Hollywood continues to provide funding to support HIV and AIDS education, prevention, and medical services — as well as programs for mental health, food, housing, and community enhancement — for community members.
Since its founding in 1983, AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) has grown to become of the largest and most effective AIDS service organizations in the nation. Services and programs are offered to 11,000 clients each year.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Youtube video IAS 2015 Dr. Chris Peterson ZFN Gene Editing
Here is the presentation that Dr. Peterson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer gave on ZFN editing of Stem Cells in Non-Human primates.
17 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uJE1b75Yuw
17 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uJE1b75Yuw
Monday, July 20, 2015
Recap of Sangamo Related topics at IAS 2015
From I-base.info
http://i-base.info/htb/28625
In the second plenary, long-time HIV positive activist Matt Sharp, expanded on cure research from a personal perspective from early involvement in community responses in San Francisco in the 1980s through to achieving five year follow-up after having been an early participant in the first zinc finger nuclease-based gene therapy safety study: while his CD4 cells have doubled, there is little understand of the clinical implications and ageing takes him into unchartered waters as a subject for research.
Diagnosed in 1988 and recently having celebrated his 60th birthday, Matt gave a calm, steady and sober evaluation of being part of a community response that included fellow activists Martin Delaney (in whose name much of the US public cure research programme is named after) and Bob Munk, the popular long-time activist whose death in the week before the conference left many of us saddened after a long and inspiring fight against progressively debilitating HIV-related complications
The plenary talk on approaches to engineering T cells was given by James Riley from the University of Pennsylvania who stressed the potential for gene therapy to improve on CD4 responses which in the context of cure research will need to be sustained for decades if ART is to be stopped.
In addition to the history of this field from early studies in 1996 that included antisense molecules targeting integrated proviral DNA, this talked focused on the use of zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) and Sangamo compound SB-728 that modifies and reinfuses CD4 cells to carry CCR5 deletions.
A new compound C34 is building on this technology with the aim of producing a greater percentage of HIV resistant cells with the hope that this will have a greater impact on viral suppression.
http://i-base.info/htb/28625
In the second plenary, long-time HIV positive activist Matt Sharp, expanded on cure research from a personal perspective from early involvement in community responses in San Francisco in the 1980s through to achieving five year follow-up after having been an early participant in the first zinc finger nuclease-based gene therapy safety study: while his CD4 cells have doubled, there is little understand of the clinical implications and ageing takes him into unchartered waters as a subject for research.
Diagnosed in 1988 and recently having celebrated his 60th birthday, Matt gave a calm, steady and sober evaluation of being part of a community response that included fellow activists Martin Delaney (in whose name much of the US public cure research programme is named after) and Bob Munk, the popular long-time activist whose death in the week before the conference left many of us saddened after a long and inspiring fight against progressively debilitating HIV-related complications
The plenary talk on approaches to engineering T cells was given by James Riley from the University of Pennsylvania who stressed the potential for gene therapy to improve on CD4 responses which in the context of cure research will need to be sustained for decades if ART is to be stopped.
In addition to the history of this field from early studies in 1996 that included antisense molecules targeting integrated proviral DNA, this talked focused on the use of zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) and Sangamo compound SB-728 that modifies and reinfuses CD4 cells to carry CCR5 deletions.
A new compound C34 is building on this technology with the aim of producing a greater percentage of HIV resistant cells with the hope that this will have a greater impact on viral suppression.
Official 2015 IAS Press Conference: Towards an HIV CURE Youtube 7/21/15
This live broadcast will be available on Youtube at 11:00 AM Central time tomorrow 7/21/15.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iXvueqc_8c&list=PL_Emxk89MDn0E9yLNIwmNSjMwm6nGNc5B&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iXvueqc_8c&list=PL_Emxk89MDn0E9yLNIwmNSjMwm6nGNc5B&index=4
Sunday, July 19, 2015
James Riley, UPENN presentation at IAS 2015
As an invited speaker James Riley, Ph.D. of the University of Pennsylvania gave the following presentation:
Engineering T Cells to Functionally Cure HIV-1 Infection.
Abstract:
Despite the ability of antiretroviral therapy to minimize human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication and increase the duration and quality of patients' lives, the health consequences and financial burden associated with the lifelong treatment regimen render a permanent cure highly attractive. Although T cells play an important role in controlling virus replication, they are themselves targets of HIV-mediated destruction. Direct genetic manipulation of T cells for adoptive cellular therapies could facilitate a functional cure by generating HIV-1-resistant cells, redirecting HIV-1-specific immune responses, or a combination of the two strategies. In contrast to a vaccine approach, which relies on the production and priming of HIV-1-specific lymphocytes within a patient's own body, adoptive T-cell therapy provides an opportunity to customize the therapeutic T cells prior to administration. However, at present, it is unclear how to best engineer T cells so that sustained control over HIV-1 replication can be achieved in the absence of antiretrovirals. This review focuses on T-cell gene-engineering and gene-editing strategies that have been performed in efforts to inhibit HIV-1 replication and highlights the requirements for a successful gene therapy-mediated functional cure.
Engineering T Cells to Functionally Cure HIV-1 Infection.
Abstract:
Despite the ability of antiretroviral therapy to minimize human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication and increase the duration and quality of patients' lives, the health consequences and financial burden associated with the lifelong treatment regimen render a permanent cure highly attractive. Although T cells play an important role in controlling virus replication, they are themselves targets of HIV-mediated destruction. Direct genetic manipulation of T cells for adoptive cellular therapies could facilitate a functional cure by generating HIV-1-resistant cells, redirecting HIV-1-specific immune responses, or a combination of the two strategies. In contrast to a vaccine approach, which relies on the production and priming of HIV-1-specific lymphocytes within a patient's own body, adoptive T-cell therapy provides an opportunity to customize the therapeutic T cells prior to administration. However, at present, it is unclear how to best engineer T cells so that sustained control over HIV-1 replication can be achieved in the absence of antiretrovirals. This review focuses on T-cell gene-engineering and gene-editing strategies that have been performed in efforts to inhibit HIV-1 replication and highlights the requirements for a successful gene therapy-mediated functional cure.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Comprehensive Report on the HIV Pipeline
This 100 page comprehensive report details the state of HIV research in 2015.
Here is the mention of Sangamo's work:
A development in gene therapy that made the news earlier this year was the approval by the FDA of a clinical trial involving genetic modification of stem cells. The project involves collaboration between researchers from City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles, the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and Sangamo BioSciences, with support from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Stem cells will be extracted from individuals, treated with Sangamo’s zinc finger nuclease technology to disrupt the CCR5 gene, and then reinfused with the aim of generating CCR5-negative immune cells resistant to HIV. According to a press release from CIRM, the initial study population will be HIV-positive individuals responding poorly to ART.88 Although some of the headlines described the approach as a “functional cure”89 or “potential cure,”90 this is in fact only an exploratory study, and it is wildly premature to suggest that it could be curative; previous trials involving genetic modification of stem cells have generated only low levels of gene-modified CD4+ T cells.91
Research continues into the use of the Sangamo BioSciences technology to genetically modify CD4+ T cells ex vivo. The CD4+ T cells are extracted from HIV-positive individuals, exposed to the zinc finger nuclease to disrupt the CCR5 gene, then expanded and reinfused. In studies published and presented to date,94,95 an adenovirus vector was used to deliver the zinc finger nuclease into the CD4+ T cells during the process. The company is now testing a different and potentially more efficient approach in which messenger RNA encoding the zinc finger nuclease is used instead of an adenovirus vector. Over the past year, two clinical trials have opened that will deliver CD4+ T cells modified with this method; both are using transient administration of cyclophosphamide prior to the infusion to enhance the engraftment of the altered cells.
Report:
http://www.pipelinereport.org/2015/cure-and-immune-based-and-gene-therapies
PDF:
http://www.pipelinereport.org/sites/g/files/g575521/f/201507/2015%20Pipeline%20Report%20Full.pdf
Here is the mention of Sangamo's work:
A development in gene therapy that made the news earlier this year was the approval by the FDA of a clinical trial involving genetic modification of stem cells. The project involves collaboration between researchers from City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles, the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and Sangamo BioSciences, with support from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Stem cells will be extracted from individuals, treated with Sangamo’s zinc finger nuclease technology to disrupt the CCR5 gene, and then reinfused with the aim of generating CCR5-negative immune cells resistant to HIV. According to a press release from CIRM, the initial study population will be HIV-positive individuals responding poorly to ART.88 Although some of the headlines described the approach as a “functional cure”89 or “potential cure,”90 this is in fact only an exploratory study, and it is wildly premature to suggest that it could be curative; previous trials involving genetic modification of stem cells have generated only low levels of gene-modified CD4+ T cells.91
Research continues into the use of the Sangamo BioSciences technology to genetically modify CD4+ T cells ex vivo. The CD4+ T cells are extracted from HIV-positive individuals, exposed to the zinc finger nuclease to disrupt the CCR5 gene, then expanded and reinfused. In studies published and presented to date,94,95 an adenovirus vector was used to deliver the zinc finger nuclease into the CD4+ T cells during the process. The company is now testing a different and potentially more efficient approach in which messenger RNA encoding the zinc finger nuclease is used instead of an adenovirus vector. Over the past year, two clinical trials have opened that will deliver CD4+ T cells modified with this method; both are using transient administration of cyclophosphamide prior to the infusion to enhance the engraftment of the altered cells.
Report:
http://www.pipelinereport.org/2015/cure-and-immune-based-and-gene-therapies
PDF:
http://www.pipelinereport.org/sites/g/files/g575521/f/201507/2015%20Pipeline%20Report%20Full.pdf
Friday, July 17, 2015
Looks Like Sangamo Will Receive some Press for IAS 2015
In a pre-conference article the website thebodypro.com gives mention to the Sangamo related abstract,""Zinc finger nuclease gene editing for functional cure in a nonhuman primate model of HIV/AIDS " .
http://www.thebodypro.com/content/76146/research-preview-for-ias-2015-part-2-new-antiretro.html
Lets stay tuned.
http://www.thebodypro.com/content/76146/research-preview-for-ias-2015-part-2-new-antiretro.html
Lets stay tuned.
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