Cipla's new strawberry-flavored medicine can save kids from AIDS

In a bid to save thousands of children from HIV AIDS, Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla has introduced a revolutionary new drug called Quadrimune.

The medicine, developed in partnership with not-for-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), carries the flavor of strawberries and can be consumed easily by toddlers and babies.

Plus, it is relatively inexpensive as well.

Here's all about it.
Problem with HIV medication for kids

While we already have medicinal treatments for babies living with HIV, all those methods revolve around old, bitter-tasting pills or syrups with as much as 40% alcohol content.

Also, all the current medicines require refrigeration, which is often a problem in regions like Africa, where warm temperatures and electricity are common issues. In fact, people tend to bury medicines in the sand for cooling.
Data
1.8 million children living with HIV, 300 die every day

Going by the numbers, nearly 1.8 million children are estimated to be living with HIV (90% being in sub-Saharan Africa) and merely 54% of them get treated properly. This means nearly 300 children die from AIDS every day.

Solution
Now, Cipla has a pleasant-tasting solution

After years of struggle with these problems, Cipla has finally developed the answer - Quadrimune.

The drug comes in the form of a capsule, but its strawberry-flavored granules, which are nearly as big as sugar grains, can be easily swallowed by infants and kids.

Parents can make it even more palatable by mixing it with milk or baby cereal.

Advantage
Also, it doesn't require refrigeration

Quadrimune has been designed with a combination of four heat-stable antiretrovirals (ARVs), which means there's no need for refrigeration for the drug.

"The new Quadrimune is pleasant-tasting, heat-stable, and easy-to-use," Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director of DNDi said. "We will finally have a treatment designed specifically for infants and young children, who are at the highest risk of dying if they do not receive treatment."

Once approved, it would save thousands of kids

Quadrimune is being reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and should receive approval by next year.

Once that is done, the drug will cost less than $1/day for a child between 10-14kg and 50 cents/day for younger toddlers.

This would hopefully make the treatment of HIV accessible to more people and save tens of thousands of children worldwide.

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Second person to be HIV-free spells hope for the global Aids fight

For the second time in history, a person carrying the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been cured.

Almost 12 years after the first person became HIV-free, doctors have managed to replicate that success, something medical professionals all over the world tried long and hard to do.

An article details how the second patient is in “long-term remission”, similar to the first one.

How does this ‘cure’ work?

The  researchers prefer publicly calling the treatment a “long-term remission” because the idea of this being a fool-proof cure for HIV is inaccurate.

It is difficult to officially designate a treatment as a “cure” if there are only two known instances of it, they add.

Nonetheless, both treatments have a commonality: bone-marrow transplants. The transplants initially intended to treat cancer in the two patients.

A California resident, initially known only as the “Berlin patient”, became the first to be HIV-free. He had two stem cell transplants that cleared his body of HIV, according to reports.

It is reported that both patients’ immune systems were first “wiped out” via chemotherapy and then replaced with stem cell transplants and non-malignant donor cells. 

The bone marrow transplants infused their body with much-needed immunity, which then resisted the spread of HIV.

Such a transplant is not a realistic mass technique yet because it is very risky, has serious complications, and is difficult to replicate.

The report  says that despite efforts to duplicate Brown’s treatment, patients tested positive around nine months after they stopped taking anti-HIV drugs. 

However, the second person, who prefers to remain anonymous and is being called the “London patient”, has been off anti-HIV drugs for over 16 months now and has tested negative for the virus.

Hope for future treatments?

Currently, doctors prescribe anti-HIV drugs, such as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors or entry inhibitors, that not only prevent HIV cells from duplication but also prevent them from entering white blood cells.

However, Brown’s doctor said, “By repeating the procedure in another patient, there is more evidence that the ‘Berlin patient’ is not an exception.”

The London patient’s treatment was also much less harsh than Brown’s, giving medical professionals and patients renewed hope.

The London patient told the reporters, “I feel a sense of responsibility to help doctors understand how it happened so they can develop the science.”

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'Drastic' HIV decrease prompted by cancer drug in lung cancer patient

Doctors  have found the first evidence that a drug normally used to treat lung, kidney or skin cancer may be able to eradicate HIV-infected cells in people with the AIDS virus.

In a case described as potentially exciting by scientists who also advised caution, doctors said a 51-year old man given nivolumab -  saw a “drastic and persistent decrease” in the reservoirs of cells where HIV normally hides away and evades standard treatments.

The case was detailed in a report , where the same doctors also gave a case study of another patient treated with Opdivo who did not show any HIV benefit.

“We must remain careful, especially because this is only one case,” said  a professor .“This is the first case of such a drastic decrease of the HIV reservoir (but) we have...another case where there was no decrease.”

Some 37 million people worldwide have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Scientists have for years been trying to find a way of clearing HIV reservoirs with a view to being able to eradicate the virus completely and cure AIDS.

These reservoirs of HIV-infected cells are found in the immune system in places like the brain, bone marrow and genital tract. They lie hidden and dormant, and can’t be reached with standard anti-retroviral therapy HIV treatments.

If standard treatment is stopped or interrupted, the reservoirs seize the chance and the virus starts to replicate and infect more cells, rendering the patient’s immune system too weak to fight back.

“Increasingly, researchers have been looking into the use of certain drugs that appear to re-activate the latent HIV-infected cells,” the Dr. said. “This could have the effect of making them visible to the immune system, which could then attack them.”

Opdivo, or nivolumab is a PD-1 inhibitor, designed to help the body’s own immune system fend off cancer by blocking a protein called PD-1. It is one of several cancer immunotherapy drugs made by drugmakers  that work in similar way.

In this case, the 51-year-old man had received 31 injections of nivolumab every 14 days since December 2016. He was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1995 and diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer in May 2015.

After his first injection, the man’s HIV infection load, which had been low, increased progressively up until day 45, then fell back again. At the same time, the doctors explained - the activity of his immune system increased.

By day 120, the treatment had “resulted in the drastic decrease in the HIV reservoir...leading to a sustained reduction of the HIV reservoirs,” the Dr. said.

An infectious diseases expert said the case was “potentially exciting”. But like others, he advised caution.

”It’s difficult to speculate at this stage why the second patient did not show the same response,“ he said in an emailed comment. ”Differences in the size of the latent reservoir or genetic differences between individuals, affecting their ability to mount immune responses to HIV, might be important factors.

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New therapy makes HIV virus vanish from the blood of patient

SCIENTISTS in Britain are hopeful they may have cured HIV after the virus vanished from the blood of a patient treated with a new therapy. 

According to The Sunday Times, the 44-year-old is one of 50 people currently trialing a treatment that targets the disease even in its dormant state.

The unidentified patient, a social care worker in London, said: “It would be great if a cure has happened. My last blood test was a couple of weeks ago and there is no detectable virus.”

The therapy was created by a team of scientists from five UK universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London and King’s College London.

Scientists told the paper the virus is currently undetectable in the man’s blood and if it stays that way it will be the first complete cure.
Mark Samuels, managing director of the UK’s National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure, told the paper: “We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”

HIV targets the immune system, attaching itself to the DNA of T-cells, where the disease can both hide out and reproduce.

Current antiretroviral therapies (Art) target that process but cannot spot dormant infected T-cells.

The new therapy works firstly by recognising and removing the HIV-infected cells. In the next stage, a new drug called Vorinostat turns the dormant T-cells active so that they can be spotted and then targeted by the immune system.

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Low cholesterol in immune cells slows HIV progression

Why some HIV-infected people experience much slower disease progression, even without medication? It has to do with cholesterol levels in specific immune cells, scientists have found.

"A fascinating aspect of the AIDS epidemic is that a small percentage of HIV-1-infected persons maintain a relatively normal number of CD4 T cells (Th cells) and low viral load for many years without receiving antiviral therapy," said Giovanna Rappocciolo from University of Pittsburgh. 

Knowing how these individuals naturally control their HIV-1 infection and prevent the virus from progressively destroying their Th cells could be critically important to developing effective therapeutic and prevention strategies for HIV-1/AIDS, she added.

When HIV enters the body, it is typically picked up by immune system cells, called antigen-presenting cells (APCs), including dendritic cells and B lymphocytes. 

Those cells then transport the virus to lymph nodes where the APCs pass it to other immune system cells, including Th cells, via a process known as trans infection. 

HIV then uses Th cells as its main site of replication.
"It is through replication in the Th cells that levels of HIV increase and overwhelm the immune system," she noted.

In the study Rappocciolo and her colleagues compared the ability of APCs from nonprogessors, progressors and uninfected control subjects to trans infect T cells.


They found that while the cells from progression and control subjects were highly effective at mediating trans infection, those from non-progression lacked the ability.

The researchers took a closer look and discovered that the APCs from non-progression had low levels of cholesterol, even though the patients had regular levels of cholesterol in their blood. 

This defect in cholesterol metabolism is not a direct consequence of virus infection. 

Rather, it is likely present as an inherited trait in a low percentage of individuals.


"Understanding how this works could be an important clue in developing new approaches to prevent progression of HIV infection," Rappocciolo said.

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Good bacteria that protects against HIV identified

Can bacteria keep the deadly Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) at bay? Experts from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston believe so. In an article written in the PLOS ONE journal, they have said that they have identified some good bacteria'' that could protect women from HIV infection and other sexually transmitted infections.

A press release put out online by the university said they had identified the good bacteria after growing vaginal skin cells outside the body and studying the way they interacted with "good and bad" bacteria.

"The health of the human vagina depends on a symbiotic/mutually beneficial relationship with "good" bacteria that live on its surface feeding on products produced by vaginal skin cells. These good bacteria, in turn, create a physical and chemical barrier to bad bacteria and viruses including HIV,'' said the release.

The research team, led by Richard Pyles, said they discovered that certain bacterial communities alter the way HIV infects and replicates. In their current studies, a bacterial community associated with a symptomatic condition called bacterial vaginosis substantially reduced the antiviral activity of one of the leading anti-HIV medicines. Conversely, vaginal surfaces occupied by healthy bacteria and treated with the antiviral produced significantly less HIV than those vaginal surfaces without bacteria treated with the same antiviral.

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