An international research team published a paper in the journal Science on the 14th, suggesting that the combination of "α4β7" antibody injection and antiretroviral drugs may be a new method for the treatment of HIV infection. Experiments on red-throated monkeys have shown that using this method, the monkey immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in red-throated monkeys remains low after the antiretroviral drugs are stopped.
For many HIV-infected patients, antiretroviral therapy is the most common option. However, long-term use of antiretroviral drugs not only brings great economic pressure to patients, but also causes many side effects. Therefore, finding better AIDS treatment methods is the direction of the researchers' efforts. This time, a research team composed of researchers from the United States, Germany and other countries targeted the "α4β7" antibody. Previous studies have shown that this antibody can prevent the spread of SIV in algae monkeys.
In this experiment, the researchers treated the red lizards with antiretroviral drugs within 5 weeks after being infected with SIV, and injected the "α4β7" antibody into the body after 4 weeks. After 18 weeks, the researchers stopped taking the drug to the red lizard and stopped the antibody injection at the 32nd week. As a result of the control experiment, the red lizard monkeys taking only antiretroviral drugs rebounded sharply after stopping the drug, and the level of CD4 T cells, the main target of the virus, also significantly decreased. However, in the algae monkeys treated with the combination therapy, the number of SIV viruses was low and difficult to detect after the drug was stopped, and the number of CD4 T cells returned to normal. This effect can be maintained for 9 months. The researchers did not find a neutralizing antibody that can prevent red-tailed monkeys from infecting neonatal viruses, but they did find a non-neutralizing antibody against the V2 cluster of the SIV envelope protein.
Research shows that antibodies against the HIVV2 cluster have certain anti-infective effects. The researchers pointed out that patients do not need to continue taking antiretroviral drugs, because the results of this study provide new options for the treatment of AIDS. At the same time, the results of this study are also very useful for the development of new and effective HIV vaccines. The researchers said that the next step will be a more detailed study of the "α4β7" antibody to find out the truth about SIV regulation.