The trial of a potential HIV cure is underway. The scientists involved hope for initial results by November. One of them also has stark warnings about the threat to humanity of future pandemics. He believes that, as seen with HIV and monkeypox, gay men could be the \u201ccanary in the coal mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Marcus A. Conant is a consultant dermatologist whose career pre-dates the first cases of AIDS in the US. He\u2019s now Chief Medical Officer for the biotech company, American Gene Technologies (AGT). It\u2019s been working for the past few years on a groundbreaking HIV cure.<\/p>\n

Rather than medication, AGT uses gene technology to boost the capacity of the body\u2019s own immune cells to fight HIV.<\/p>\n

However, a bone marrow transplant is a risky procedure. Doctors only consider it when someone is fighting a terminal, blood-related cancer like leukemia. It is not a practical, widespread treatment for HIV when medication for the disease already exists.<\/p>\n

Instead, AGT wants to use gene technology to produce the same effect. Its process involves removing some white blood cells from an HIV-positive patient and then inserting a gene that modifies them. This enables the cells to stop HIV replication.<\/p>\n

Using gene therapy as a potential HIV cure<\/h2>\n
Hundreds of thousands of the HIV-resistant CD4 T-cells are then infused back into the patient, where they can duplicate and\u2014hopefully\u2014fight HIV.<\/p>\n
In 2020, the FDA gave approval for AGT<\/a> to start a trial involving seven patients. Those patients have had their own genetically-modified T-cells (AGT103-T) infused back into them.<\/p>\n
None experienced any negative side effects from the infusion, meaning the trial has now proceeded to its next stage<\/a>. Each patient has had their antiretroviral treatment stopped. They are being closely monitored to see if their viral loads remain undetectable.<\/p>\n
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Related: New study says HIV has a \u201csignificant\u201d impact on aging process<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Dr. Conant is not able to give Queerty<\/em> any advance insight into the trial\u2019s results when we catch up with him via the phone. It\u2019s been kept under wraps until later this year. However, he does say that he and his team are already planning a larger trial.<\/p>\n
$\"Dr.$ Dr. Marcus Conant is working to find a HIV cure (Photo: AGT)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s what science has always done,\u201d he explains. \u201cYou ask, \u2018Well which part of it is working? Why do we think that\u2019s working? And how do we make that work better?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen AZT came out in 1987, it only worked just minimally. We were able to demonstrate that it was barely prolonging the lives of patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow here we are 30 years later, with drugs that can suppress the virus essentially to levels so low that patients can have unprotected sex and they don\u2019t transmit the virus. That\u2019s an amazing advance. But it was achieved by asking, \u2018What can we do to make it work better?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cSo there will now be another study, probably in 30-50 patients. My staff and I are designing that study as we speak, to take what we learn from this and treat more patients. We will tweak it to make it even better.\u201d<\/p>\n
HIV cure eludes science for more than four decades<\/h2>\n
Gene therapy has been used to treat several conditions over the past 20 years. This includes severe combined immune deficiency syndrome (SCID) and the eye condition, retinitis pygmantosa.<\/p>\n
However, this is the first time it\u2019s been used as a potential treatment for HIV. If it works, it would be groundbreaking.<\/p>\n
$\"HIV$
HIV (in green) on an immune cell (Photo: CDC\/Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
HIV has proved stubbornly resistant to a cure. It\u2019s something Conant is only too well aware of. He has been working in the field since the early 1980s. As a dermatologist, he saw some of the first cases of men with Kaposi\u2019s Sarcoma (KS) \u2013 one of the rare cancers that became the hallmark of AIDS before treatment became available.<\/p>\n
Conant was a junior professor at UC San Francisco in 1981. He still vividely remembers seeing his first KS case in April that that year. It was a couple of months before the CDC issued its first public warning of an illness affecting gay men.<\/p>\n
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Related: Makers of once-every-six-months HIV treatment file for FDA approval<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
HIV, monkeypox and the threat of more pandemics<\/h2>\n
Because of his experience with HIV, Conant said he felt a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em> when he heard of this year\u2019s monkeypox outbreak. Cases in the US<\/a> have now exceeded 23,00 and the majority are gay men.<\/p>\n
Conant says the world must be better prepared for such outbreaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing you see in any epidemic is denial: \u2018It can\u2019t happen to us.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second thing you always see is: Someone to blame. And that\u2019s exactly what we saw with HIV\/AIDS. And that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re seeing now with monkeypox: \u2018Oh, those gay guys, if they weren\u2019t so promiscuous then the disease would never have happened.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u201cNo<\/em>,\u201d he affirms. \u201cThe disease was going to happen. It just happened in a special group first. Instead of people blaming the gay community, they should realize this is an opportunity to realize that we\u2019re going to have more and more of these zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals to humans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gay community may well be the first group in which we see this, or in whom we frequently first see this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is that? Because gay men have opportunities to travel far more frequently than their straight brothers who are raising children and staying at home and don\u2019t have the luxury of being able to pick up any time they want to and go to a party in Spain.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo all of that is very much like the canary in the coal mine. What\u2019s happening in the gay community is a warning to society: \u2018We\u2019ve got a problem here.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last 40 years we\u2019ve had HIV, you had Ebola, you had Zika, you had Covid, and now monkeypox. That\u2019s five off the top, just in my lifetime, and this is going to continue because people are traveling more.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Conant agrees with other scientists who say global warming will increase the likelihood of pandemics. Rising temperatures are causing viruses to spread out of their previous habitats.<\/p>\n
International solutions to global outbreaks<\/h2>\n
Conant wants to see a far more international solution to outbreaks, rather than countries just doing their own thing. After all, viruses have no respect for borders.<\/p>\n
He also thinks governments must take more steps to allow individuals to isolate themselves when necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey tell gay men who have the disease, \u2018Well go home and isolate.\u2019 In America, a gay man can\u2019t go home and isolate,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, you can order in all your food, but if he doesn\u2019t have an income, he can maybe order the food in for a week, and then he\u2019s running out of money. We don\u2019t have an infrastructure set up that makes \u2018go home and isolate\u2019 a practical solution.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf we don\u2019t come up with some way to handle these diseases, we are facing a potential disaster,\u201d he continues. Both Covid and monkeypox have a relatively low mortality rate. He warns that if a disease came along that killed\u2014say\u201440% of the people who acquired it, \u201cwe are going to see societies collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have learned from AIDS,\u201d says Conant. \u201cForty years ago, AIDS was the first real clear warning that \u2018hey, we need better policies for handling problems like this,\u2019 and we learned nothing. And here we are, after one disease after another, and we respond to each one as if it\u2019s a one-off and it will never happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Hudson is a contributing editor at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter at @davidhudson_uk<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
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Using gene therapy as a potential HIV cure<\/h2>\nHundreds of thousands of the HIV-resistant CD4 T-cells are then infused back into the patient, where they can duplicate and\u2014hopefully\u2014fight HIV.<\/p>\n