One Step Closer... HIV Cure Update

[big-n-tall]

Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’ | Global development | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

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Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the...

 

[TonyDown]

That's encouraging to read about the Melbourne team. 

Just this morning I read an article from the Raleigh News and Observer, that funding is ending for a prominent HIV vaccine development program led by Duke University researchers, a move the school said “represents an enormous setback” for creating a vaccine to fight the cause of AIDS.  Recent advances spurred by mRNA technologies had brought vaccine development to a pivotal juncture.

 

[SoCalBaseball]

While I'm HIV negative, I'm excited this disease is going to be destroyed and I no longer will have to take prep. It's never great taking a medication of any kind every day for the rest of our lives

[caliguy]

I'd say in the next 10 years if we don't see  an all out cure we'll at least see a functional cure. They've got so much promising stuff right now.  It's exciting that they're using the mRNA technology.

It's also exciting that a lot of the stuff can be used on other diseases as well. HIV is just the start.

I have a friend who has colon cancer but they have a new therapy that just came out 6 months ago where they're using his own immune system to fight it. No chemotherapy or surgery. The only side effects is that he feels little more tired than usual.

[craigville beach]

15 minutes ago, caliguy said:

I'd say in the next 10 years if we don't see  an all out cure we'll at least see a functional cure. They've got so much promising stuff right now.  It's exciting that they're using the mRNA technology.

It's also exciting that a lot of the stuff can be used on other diseases as well. HIV is just the start.

I have a friend who has colon cancer but they have a new therapy that just came out 6 months ago where they're using his own immune system to fight it. No chemotherapy or surgery. The only side effects is that he feels little more tired than usual.

i like to tell people that "technology is improving faster than I am declining" 

[caliguy]

4 minutes ago, craigville beach said:

i like to tell people that "technology is improving faster than I am declining" 

Yep. It's like a race. I'm trying to keep this shit together for as long as I can in the meantime. 

 

 

[+ Gar1eth]

4 hours ago, caliguy said:

Yep. It's like a race. I'm trying to keep this shit together for as long as I can in the meantime. 

 

 

When I was in grad school in the early 90's, a dermatologist told me she thought there'd be a cure for baldness in the future. I'm obviously not talking about surgery. As someone who has been mostly bald since the early 1990's, I'm still waiting. 😖😖

[+ sync]

6 minutes ago, Gar1eth said:

When I was in grad school in the early 90's, a dermatologist told me she thought there'd be a cure for baldness in the future. I'm obviously not talking about surgery. As someone who has been mostly bald since the early 1990's, I'm still waiting. 😖😖

I remember reading long time ago (don't remember the sorce) that a cure for baldness was/is on the back burner because baldness has never been designated a disease, which renders a cure unprofitable.

Perhaps our medical fellow COM members would know.

[+ Gar1eth]

4 hours ago, Gar1eth said:

When I was in grad school in the early 90's, a dermatologist told me she thought there'd be a cure for baldness in the future. I'm obviously not talking about surgery. As someone who has been mostly bald since the early 1990's, I'm still waiting. 😖😖

 

4 hours ago, sync said:

I remember reading long time ago (don't remember the sorce) that a cure for baldness was/is on the back burner because baldness has never been designated a disease, which renders a cure unprofitable.

Perhaps our medical fellow COM members would know.

While I have no specific knowledge, that seems unlikely to me. A large proportion of 'plastic' surgeries aren't covered by insurance as they aren't medically necessary. But people pay for them anyway. Same thing with hair transplants. 

[pubic_assistance]

On 6/5/2025 at 8:34 PM, TonyDown said:

funding is ending for a prominent HIV vaccine development program led by Duke University researchers, a move the school said “represents an enormous setback” for creating a vaccine to fight the cause of AIDS

A good friend of mine is an expert in immunology. He said when he was younger there was a big rush of HIV research money. BUT - anyone who proposed a CURE was shot down and denied research funding. The ONLY projects ever funded were those that focused on TREATMENT (pharmaceuticals), not CURES. 

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

4 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

A good friend of mine is an expert in immunology. He said when he was younger there was a big rush of HIV research money. BUT - anyone who proposed a CURE was shot down and denied research funding. The ONLY projects ever funded were those that focused on TREATMENT (pharmaceuticals), not CURES. 

Interesting.

And it correlates to what the Gates Foundation did some years back when they pulled an immense amount of funding that was going toward research for a cure.  They didn't entirely explain the move, but it didn't go unnoticed by me.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the amount of profit that drug companies make from diseases like cancer and HIV is immense.

You think they want to turn that spigot off?

[pubic_assistance]

56 minutes ago, BenjaminNicholas said:

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the amount of profit that drug companies make from diseases like cancer and HIV is immense.

Guess who was the director of NIAID who needed to approved the research.

Answer: Anthony Fauci.

My friend said his lab had developed groundbreaking research demonstrating that B cell response to HIV can prevent the virus from attaching to your T cells. They had a mouse model where a single immunization tricked the body into always making a B cell response instead of a T cell response.  This could have lead to the development of a vaccine in the early 90s. Fauci refused to further fund the research (it was a university lab that had some funding for initial foundation work). The letter of refusal specifically said that they are currently focused on TREATMENT (pharmaceuticals)..and although their proposal had merit, there was no immediate funding available for such an approach to preventing the spread of HIV. 😳

Edited June 8 by pubic_assistance
spelling

[+ sync]

9 hours ago, Gar1eth said:

 

While I have no specific knowledge, that seems unlikely to me. A large proportion of 'plastic' surgeries aren't covered by insurance as they aren't medically necessary. But people pay for them anyway. Same thing with hair transplants. 

You make a very good point, but my concept of a "cure" would be on the order of a vaccine or an oral supplement rather than an invasive surgery. 

[mike carey]

It seems to me there's a conflation of a couple of issues here.

• Current research priorities. Effective treatments are available, so funding for research on cures (whether by pharma firms or universities) could be perceived as being determined by profits from them.
• Historical research. With no treatment or prevention drugs available, it was rational to favour treatment over cure, when treatment would have been the public health priority, at least for government funding.

What made sense for drug research priorities in the 1980s and 90s was different to what makes sense today. It's a counterfactual, but would diverting funds from treatment research to fund researching cures in the 1980s have delayed the development of treatments that prevented large numbers of premature deaths? 

[pubic_assistance]

1 hour ago, mike carey said:

would diverting funds from treatment research to fund researching cures in the 1980s have delayed the development of treatments that prevented large numbers of premature deaths? 

That was indeed the narrative being promoted in the 80s. 

However. Its 40 years later and no funding has ever been found for that cure that would end the very profitable pills that thousands of homosexuals rely on.

[+ sniper]

9 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

That was indeed the narrative being promoted in the 80s. 

However. Its 40 years later and no funding has ever been found for that cure that would end the very profitable pills that thousands of homosexuals rely on.

There are cheap generics for HIV meds these days. The scandal is that pharmacy benefit managers exist and they keep them off of formularies. I'm about to start taking PreP outside of my insurance because I can't morally justify the roughly thousand dollars a bottle my employer pays when I can get the same medication for something like 50 bucks a month with Goodrx. This should be a scandal but too many orgs have their hands in the cookie jar.

As for not funding a cure in the 80s, at that point was there ANY viral disease we had a cure for? I don't necessarily think it was ulterior motives keeping that from happening back then.

Also, I don't think at the time people understood the absolute fuckery the pharmaceutical industry would get up to with patent games and barely tweaking formulations to keep prices increasing. The same medicine always declined in price back then over time, and that was the expectation of what would happen for HIV meds...they'd come down to something affordable. 

Edited June 9 by sniper

[pubic_assistance]

8 minutes ago, sniper said:

I don't necessarily think it was ulterior motives

I happen to know it was a decision based on profit. The refused to fund a respected research project that would have lead to BLOCKING HIV from spreading via your T cells.

[+ sniper]

58 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

I happen to know it was a decision based on profit. The refused to fund a respected research project that would have lead to BLOCKING HIV from spreading via your T cells.

No offense, but that's your friend's interpretation of the denial. If they actually put that in a letter, I'd expect to see it on 60 Minutes.  But again, given the fuckery the companies are engaged in now with insulin and Epi-pens...it's possible.

 

 

[+ sniper]

On 6/7/2025 at 11:23 PM, Gar1eth said:

When I was in grad school in the early 90's, a dermatologist told me she thought there'd be a cure for baldness in the future. I'm obviously not talking about surgery. As someone who has been mostly bald since the early 1990's, I'm still waiting. 😖😖

There pretty much is a cure for baldness now but it's more a preventative and if you don't start early enough you're too late. 

[pubic_assistance]

1 hour ago, sniper said:

No offense, but that's your friend's interpretation of the denial

I dont take any offense becasue you're right. It is his opinion based on his experience. That is true.

As far as why its not on 60 minutes can be explained by the fact that my friend's indignation was borne of his youthful desire to help mankind.  Now he's the CFO of a pharmaceutical company, he's not in a position to make waves about the greed of the industry.

His opinion however (in private) is still that Fauci was a disgusting industry crony for blocking the funding. 

Edited June 9 by pubic_assistance
grammar

[+ José Soplanucas]

4 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

I happen to know it was a decision based on profit. 

How come? You seem to be making a well informed inference, isn't it too much to say that you "happen to know"?

PS: Ignore. I hadn't read your previous post.

Edited June 9 by José Soplanucas

[+ sniper]

2 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

I dont take any offense becasue you're right. It is his opinion based on his experience. That is true.

As far as why its not on 60 minutes can be explained by the fact that my friend's indignation was borne of his youthful desire to help mankind.  Now he's the CFO of a pharmaceutical company, he's not in a position to make waves about the greed of the industry.

His opinion however (in private) is still that Fauci was a disgusting industry crony for blocking the funding. 

People who make it to the C-suite tend to be the kind of person who hates people who get in their way for any reason....

[+ nycman]

Yeah, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate here. Admittedly however, I have no idea where the “truth” lies on this topic. 

You have to remember that early in HIV research (and almost 99% still true today), every attempt to "cure" HIV was an absolute failure. Science just wasn’t (and pretty much still isn’t) up to the task. Pouring more and more money into failure after failure simply was statistically a bad idea. There was some promise (and eventually a huge victory) in treating HIV and making the disease “manageable". Fauci played the odds and took that bet.

I would argue that Fauci’s bet (or his deal with the devil, if you prefer) paid off in spades. There are millions who are alive today that wouldn’t be if all that funding kept being dumped into the halcyon dumpster of seeking a cure instead of being funneled into the more realistic treatment pathway. Science wasn’t (and still largely isn’t) developed enough to even dream of a cure.

I believe that’s changing, and I believe we’ll see real lasting cures for the masses in our lifetime. Nonetheless, retrospect yields a cloudy vision at best, and admittedly the "truth" is probably somewhere in the middle.

[pubic_assistance]

19 minutes ago, nycman said:

I would argue that Fauci’s bet (or his deal with the devil, if you prefer) paid off in spades.

I don't doubt thats true. 

But its 40 years later..and they still never funded the B cell immunity project.

 

[caliguy]

21 hours ago, nycman said:

Yeah, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate here. Admittedly however, I have no idea where the “truth” lies on this topic. 

You have to remember that early in HIV research (and almost 99% still true today), every attempt to "cure" HIV was an absolute failure. Science just wasn’t (and pretty much still isn’t) up to the task. Pouring more and more money into failure after failure simply was statistically a bad idea. There was some promise (and eventually a huge victory) in treating HIV and making the disease “manageable". Fauci played the odds and took that bet.

I would argue that Fauci’s bet (or his deal with the devil, if you prefer) paid off in spades. There are millions who are alive today that wouldn’t be if all that funding kept being dumped into the halcyon dumpster of seeking a cure instead of being funneled into the more realistic treatment pathway. Science wasn’t (and still largely isn’t) developed enough to even dream of a cure.

I believe that’s changing, and I believe we’ll see real lasting cures for the masses in our lifetime. Nonetheless, retrospect yields a cloudy vision at best, and admittedly the "truth" is probably somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, these cures come and go so I take it all with a grain of salt. One company called AGT looks promising too.  They're well into human trials right now.

Basically they take some white blood cells out of your body. Do some Gene editing I think they call it. Grow it to like to like a million strong in the lab and then reintroduce it back into your body. Those cells are now immune to infection. They've been talking about cost being around 100K for one infusion.. Expensive but probably still just a drop in the bucket over pharma over a lifetime. 

Just like my friend. I think that using your immune system as a weapon against disease is definitely going to be the future of medicine. 

HIV Cure Countdown: HIV Cure 2023 News, Updates, and Progress on Our Clinical Trial - American Gene Technologies

WWW.AMERICANGENE.COM

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Follow along with the American Gene Technologies team as we track the clinical progress of AGT103-T, our potentially...

 

Edited June 10 by caliguy