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Scripps Florida scientists find‘functional cure’ for HIV

BUSINESS By Jeff Ostrowski - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

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Posted: 2:37 p.m. Thursday, November 02, 2017

In findings that could point to a bettertreatment for HIV infections, Scripps Florida scientistssay they’ve found a new way to manage the virus.

Scripps Associate Professor Susana Valente saysshe successfully tested a drug that promises a“functional cure” for HIV: The infection isn’t gone, butthe virus lies dormant.

RELATED: Federal grants to Florida scientists top$600 million, breaking record

The results of a study led by Valente were publishedin October in the journal Cell Reports. Valente andresearchers from Scripps Florida, the University ofNorth Carolina and Walter Reed Army Institute ofResearch used a natural compound known asdidehydro-Cortistatin A, or dCA. It stops the spread ofHIV by inhibiting the protein Tat.

“It is really the proof of concept for a functional cure,”Valente said.

HIV, the precursor to AIDS, no longer is the deathsentence it was in the 1980s. Still, HIV remains achronic disease that requires regular medication.Patients take so-called cocktails of antiretroviral drugsthat keep the infection in check but don’t kill the virus.

“As soon as somebody stops treatment, these cellswill rebound,” Valente said.

Her research found that dCA can suppress HIV to thepoint that even if a patient stops taking medication,the HIV infection won’t come back immediately. Inhalf of mice treated with dCA, HIV levels disappearedfor 16 days after all antiretroviral drugs were stopped,researchers said.

Researchers tested dCA both in cells of humans withHIV and in mice infected with HIV.

In another apparent benefit of dCA, Valente said thecompound also can stop the neurologicaldeterioration caused by HIV. Even while takingmedication that controls their HIV, patients can suffermotor dysfunction, speech problems and othercognitive issues.

Valente, a native of Portugal who joined ScrippsFlorida in 2009, has spent years investigating dCA.She won grants from the National Institutes of Healthto support her work.

Valente champions an approach to HIV known as“block and lock.” The strategy aims to block thereactivation of the virus in cells, and leave HIVdormant.

The dominant approach toward HIV research inrecent years has been “shock and kill.” Scientists lookfor ways to eradicate the virus rather than simplymanage it, and that plan of attack has won much ofthe research funding.

“Everybody was going berserk for shock and kill,”Valente said.

Marcella Flores, associate director of research atamfAR, an AIDS research foundation in New York,called the results of Valente’s research both “veryexciting” and a vindication for Valente’s approach tovanquishing HIV.

“It is the first study to show the strength of block andlock,” Flores said.

She noted that sending HIV into remission isn’t assatisfying as killing it altogether. Patients withdormant HIV still would have to visit physiciansregularly and still would carry the stigma of HIV. ButFlores said she’s not taking sides in the shock and killvs. block and lock debate.

“I am agnostic about what cure is going to be thewinner in the end,” Flores said. “There’s merit toboth.”

Valente, for her part, hopes a successful experimentgives momentum to her approach. Reflecting thelong-term nature of basic research, Valente’s HIVtreatment is years away from being marketed topatients.

“Now there’s a million questions,” she said.

Among them: For how long does dCA work? Mightthe virus rebound someday? Would a big pharmapartner be willing to test the treatment in humans?

“We’ve found this works, so now we need to push itinto the clinic,” Valente said. “That’s pharma’s job.”

An estimated 1.1 million people in the United Stateswere living with HIV at the end of 2014, and nearly 37million people worldwide were infected at the end of2016, according to the U.S. Centers for DiseaseControl.

In the United States, 6,721 people died from HIV andAIDS in 2014, the CDC says. Globally, about a millionpeople a year die of AIDS-related diseases.

“HIV is still in epidemic proportions in certainpopulations,” Flores said.

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Scripps Florida researcher Susana Valente is working on “afunctional cure” for HIV at her lab in Jupiter on November 1, 2017.(Richard Graulich / The Palm Beach Post)

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