Development of RNA-based approaches to stem cell gene therapy for HIV

Despite significant advances in treatment and prevention programs, HIV infection with progression to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is still prevalent in California. The CDC Estimates >56,000 new cases of HIV infection each year in the US with over 148,000 cumulative cases reported in California alone (as of 2009). Multi-drug therapy has been helpful in reducing the severity of disease and prolonging lifespan but sixteen of every one hundred HIV patients will eventually fail to control the virus after attempting at least 2 drug treatment regimens. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently estimated the lifetime cost of medical care for AIDS to be in excess of $600,000 per patient, over 85% of which is attributable to prescription drug costs. Additionally, medication non-compliance, intolerance of drugs due to side effects and the development of resistant strains of virus are all complicating factors in obtaining consistent clinical benefit with lifelong drug therapy. Therefore, there is a need to provide a longer lasting, cost effective therapy for this disease. Our project builds on prior work from our laboratories in which genetically engineered blood stem cells were transplanted into HIV patients and shown to give rise to gene-marked peripheral blood cells that last for up to 2 years. These cells may protect HIV patients from progression to AIDS if they are present in sufficient numbers. Our therapeutic candidate is a gene modified human blood stem cell carrying multiple anti-HIV molecules that prevent virus infection, replication and spread and a gene that allows us to chemically “enrich” the number of disease resistant cells present in a patient’s blood. The anti-HIV molecules are made of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and were developed and tested in our laboratories. We have already conducted a first generation stem cell therapy clinical trial to test these molecules with promising results. We now propose to refine and further develop this treatment with second generation RNA molecules and gene transfer procedures that will improve the number of disease resistant cells in the blood of HIV patients. We will develop an animal model system to test newer, more efficient anti-HIV molecules and a drug treatment method to enhance the number of HIV resistant stem cells circulating in the blood of patients that receive gene modified blood stem cells. At the end of the proposed experiments, we expect to have selected the most efficient combination of RNA molecules and drug selection strategy to provide a sufficient number of disease resistant cells in the peripheral blood to prevent progression to clinical immunodeficiency (AIDS).