Tailor-made HIV/AIDS treatment possible

MONTREAL, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Canadian scientists say they've developed a new treatment for the human immunodeficiency virus that has successfully passed its first clinical trial.

McGill University Health Center researchers, led by Dr. Jean-Pierre Routy, an associate professor at McGill, and Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sekaly from the University of Montreal, said their approach is an immunotherapy customized for each individual HIV patient.

"This is a vaccine made for the individual patient -- an 'haute couture' therapy, instead of an off-the-rack treatment" Routy said.

The scientists said the vaccine primes the immune system to fight the specific strain of HIV/AIDS infecting a given patient. They said the therapy shows immense promise and could be an even more effective weapon against the virus than are anti-retroviral cocktails currently in use.

The results of the first-stage clinical trials, which tested the therapy in conjunction with anti-retroviral drugs, were published recently in the journal Clinical Immunology. Phase 2 of the clinical trial, which is nearly complete, is testing the therapy's efficacy on its own at eight different sites in Canada.