Six of 24 people who received a series of immunomodulatory vaccines were able to keep HIV viral load below 2000 copies/mL 6 months after stopping HIV antiretroviral treatment.
This could be one of the first signals that lowering the set point of viral replication could be a key part of controlling HIV without regular treatment, said Steven Deeks, MD, from the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. The finding reminded him of the early days of HIV drug development in the 1990s, he told Medscape Medical News.
"What we're looking for right now is AZT," but for a cure, said Deeks, referencing azidothymidine, the first HIV medicine to show clinical activity against HIV. "AZT by itself back in 1991 didn't do much. But AZT with 3TC [lamivudine] and a protease inhibitor? That was a home run.
"Maybe this is the AZT of some future cure regimen."
The data, from the AELIX-002single-center study, was presented at the virtual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections 2021. This series of vaccines isn't like the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines meant to prevent COVID-19. Instead, what researchers tested was whether a series of shots designed to beef up different CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses to HIV could help participants' own immune systems slow viral replication in the absence of treatment.
