HIV Reservoirs Conference in Vienna. First, the room.

First: The room. The first HIV reservoirs workshop at the IAC is held at the University of Vienna, which appears to be a former palace. There are large statues of Austrian emperors. There are huge paintings of a man I am pretty sure is Louis XIV. The researchers are declaiming from what may or  may not be a throne. When I pan to the ceiling, what you can't quite see are colossal paintings by Klimt. Also, it is 90 degrees, and as the afternoon wore on, the comments and questions to speakers became more and more sharp and annoyed, I think because of the heat. If not for the temperature, I could stay in this room forever. Click on each image to see the full photo.  I'm not sure why the square below is black, but click on it--it works. Next up: The science.

Your Input: What would you like to ask top AIDS cure researchers?

Hi,

We're here at the two-day Reservoirs Workshop (HIV reservoirs is researcher talk for CURE research).

I'm here with the top AIDS cure researchers in the world. We have some good questions for them:

How much money are you spending to duplicate the Berlin Patient experiment?

How long will it be before we can try Paula Cannon's mice experiment in people?

What would you like to ask top AIDS *cure* researchers?

STARTING THURSDAY from Vienna: We're Blogging on a Cure!

Hi,

Starting on THURSDAY (so, soon) we will attend a special meeting on AIDS *cure* research as well as the Vienna International AIDS Conference. We will be blogging a lot, in plain English, about what we learn about AIDS cure research.

PLEASE FOLLOW US AS WE BLOG ON PROSPECTS FOR A CURE FOR AIDS:

The Cure Blog:              http://aidspolicyproject.blogspot.com/
Twitter:                           http://www.twitter.com/aidspolicyproj
Facebook:                       http://tiny.cc/vt38Y
Our web site:                  http://www.AIDSPolicyProject.org

With photos, so look out!

Study says increasing HIV drug treatment will save millions through prevention

Winnipeg Free Press: "The study was published in the U.S.-based journal 'AIDS,' the official journal of the International AIDS Society.
Montaner said the findings are the first to link savings to prevention through increased treatment.
'Until now people failed to incorporate into that cost effectiveness the fact that by treating me I am not infecting you, her, him or whoever and they are not infecting Peter, Paul, Mary and John,' he said.
'The failure of those new generations of infections to be materialized represents a huge saving,' said Montaner, who leads the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS."

Who's the Berlin Patient?

The Berlin Patient. You may have heard about him, or his story may be news to you. If he is reading this, a warm hi from us at the AIDS Policy Project--we hope to have a beer some day with you.

So--basically, the Berlin Patient is an American man of about 40 who lived in Berlin, had AIDS and also leukemia. His leukemia doctor needed to give him a bone marrow transplant to treat the leukemia. But he used a special person as a donor--someone who was born with the "CCR5 deletion" (remember those initials) which means that the person cannot be infected with AIDS. About 1/1,000 Northern Europeans is born with this--it's a mutation.

And the rest, literally, is history.

Like the Berlin Patient, except in a mouse, and easier to do.

This is based on information from Jules Levin (www.NATAP.org), who tracks all things AIDS and research.

Basically a California researcher named Paula Cannon has demonstrated that in a mouse, if you treat human stem cells (yes, they're using a mouse that's been engineered to have a human immune system) with a new zinc finger technology, you can disrupt CCR5, which is something that HIV needs to infect cells. The healthy stem cells then reproduce and spread into many kinds of uninfected immune cells. And you don't need to do this to a ton of cells, because these new HIV-free cells you are creating spread quickly. Similar to the Berlin Patient, (he got a special stem cell transplant from someone whose immune system naturally lacked CCR5) but at least in this mouse experiment, a complete stem cell transplantation isn't necessary. Also, if it works in humans, it's a "one shot thing." OK now, we are cooking with gas. Article was in press (and possibly out of reach of most other researchers) for 9 months. Bolding is mine.

Great article on AIDS cure research by Jon Cohen

Basically a survey of the top research happening in California right now, much of it funded by the deep-pocketed, publicly funded but little-known California Center for Regenerative Medicine, California's stem cell research agency. Article discusses the Berlin Patient and the research that has followed that case (possibly the first cure of a person with AIDS).