LOS ANGELES, May 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- (NASDAQ: ENOB)
– A novel approach to HIV cell therapy developed by Dr.
Serhat Gumrukçu (Dr. Serhat), Director of the Seraph Research
Institute (SRI), and his team was presented yesterday as a new
approach to treating HIV in humans. The research findings and
developments were presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the
American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) to thousands of
industry attendees.
"Our novel approach here offers some new insights to try and
achieve this goal by applying immune-based strategies."
The presentation profiled A 54-year-old man with human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV), who was not completely suppressing
the virus under antiretroviral therapy (ART). The patient showed
promising results when treated with this new novel cell therapy
approach.
"Great advances have been made in the treatment of many disease
states including HIV, with immune-based therapies," says Dr.
Phillip Musikanth, HIV specialist and Medical Director of Seraph
Medical. "We have yet to master eliminating HIV from the human
host. Our novel approach here offers some new insights to try and
achieve this goal by applying immune-based strategies."
Working in collaboration with the Seraph Research Institute, and
under the oversight of an independent Institutional Review Board
(IRB), the patient was treated by Dr. Musikanth at SRI's clinical
site Seraph Medical. Dr. Musikanth used an adoptive cell therapy
involving natural killer (NK) and gamma delta T-cells (gdT),
collected from a healthy donor.
The treatment commenced with interrupting the patient's
antiretroviral medications and administering preliminary supportive
medications to ready the body for the new cell therapy. This
resulted in an expected initial rise in the level of HIV detected
in the bloodstream.
Approximately three weeks after the new treatment commenced, the
patient's HIV levels began to decline. At the 100-day mark, his
viral load was below the level of detection (<20 copies/ml). To
this day, over one year from the start of the new cell therapy
treatment, the patient continues to go without antiretroviral
medications and his HIV levels have remained at or below the
detectable level.
The idea of using alloreactive immune cells to effectively
eliminate any undesirable targets, like cancer, was pioneered in
1986 by Dr. Shimon Slavin in
Israel. He initially developed
this immunotherapy to treat chemotherapy-resistant cancers. "Having
worked on creating novel cell therapies for the past 5 decades, I
think the treatment developed at the Seraph Research Institute has
great potential to eliminate HIV- infected cells and educate the
immune system to fight the virus in new ways," says Dr. Slavin.
Seraph Research Institute is currently in the process of seeking
regulatory approval to expand into clinical
trials.
About Serhat Gumrukçu, MD, PhD
Dr. Serhat Gumrukçu
(Dr. Serhat) is the Executive Director and Director of
Translational Research at the Seraph Research Institute, based in
Los Angeles. His current research
on infectious diseases focuses on creating new approaches and
mechanisms of actions in antiviral therapies through co-opting
virus-specific components of viral replication machinery, on
viruses including SARS-CoV-2, HIV, HBV, influenza and Ebola.
About Phillip Musikanth, MD
Dr. Phillip Musikanth is
the Medical Director at Seraph Medical, which works in partnership
with the Seraph Research Institute in the care and treatment of
patients with chronic or terminal diseases. Dr. Musikanth has been
practicing medicine since 1986. He completed his residency in
Internal Medicine at the USC Medical
Center in LA County. His medical practice focuses on General
Internal Medicine and HIV/AIDS.
About Seraph Research Institute
Seraph Research
Institute is a non-profit research institution, founded by Dr.
Serhat, registered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, that works to advance medical science in the areas of
unmet need. The organization's team of leading research scientists
and medical experts work to answer the fundamental questions rooted
in science – studying disease at every level from molecular to
cellular – and physiology, from individual to population-based
scales to create novel approaches to help patients with incurable
diseases.
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SOURCE Seraph Research Institute