At the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona-IDIBAPS they have createdthe first effective therapeutic vaccine against AIDSthat, although it does not cure the disease, it canprevent antiretroviral treatments from lasting a lifetime.
Specifically, the Infectious Diseases and AIDS research team, headed by Josep Maria Gatell, has developed a model ofpersonalized therapeutic vaccine made from dendritic cells of each patient, which were sensitized in the laboratory against an activated form of their own virus. Although the results show the decrease in viral load is still insufficient, this therapeutic vaccine is the first to achieve a significant response in most patients. MagazineJournal of Infectious Diseaseshas published this study, which has had the international collaboration of teams from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie de Paris / INSERM (France) and the National Institute of Cancer in Maryland (USA).
A total of 24 patients participated in this double-blind clinical trial, half of whom were the control group and did not receive the vaccine. None of them had received antiretroviral treatment and to enter the study they had to maintain a good T-lymphocyte load in their blood (> 450 per mm3). 3 doses of personalized vaccines were administered, with a separation of 2 weeks between each of them. After 24 weeks it was found that in most patients there had been asignificant decrease in viral load. This decrease was very important in some of them, although in no case was it achieved that the virus was undetectable.
Even so, it is a very important improvement over previous initiatives that achieved with a very similar vaccine, a modest response in 30% of treated patients. No therapeutic vaccine had so far achieved the response levels achieved in this study.
