Unlike previous HIV “cures” involving cancer patients given bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection, researchers said CAR-T could be used by a much broader patient population. The Phase 1 trial involved CAR-T, a one-time therapy in which a patient’s T-cells are extracted, altered and multiplied in a lab and infused back into ⁠their body. In this case, the CAR-T targeted the CD4 and CCR5 binding sites of the HIV.

Of three trial patients ‌treated with a standard CAR-T dose, researchers said two maintained undetectable to ‌very low levels of HIV after stopping antiretroviral therapy — one for over two years so far and another for nearly a year. “The two that have ‌been off (HIV drugs) the longest and doing well were importantly diagnosed pretty quickly and put on therapy pretty quickly,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the study’s lead investigator.

Currently, CAR-T ‌treatments are available for several types of blood cancer, and are being developed for autoimmune diseases like lupus and scleroderma. Tap the link to learn more about the recent study.

Re-engineering an HIV patient’s own immune cells to find and destroy the virus succeeded in controlling the infection in a small first-in-human study, but researchers said work is needed to confirm ⁠the findings and determine which patients are most likely to benefit.

Scientists have developed a way to turn the body’s own immune cells into cancer-fighting agents—without removing them from the body—by using red blood cells to deliver genetic instructions. Current CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) therapies typically involve collecting a patient’s T cells, genetically modifying them in the laboratory, and then reinfusing them in a process that can take weeks. The new strategy aims to bypass that step.

In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine in Hangzhou, China, report that they used engineered erythrocytes, or red blood cells, to carry messenger RNA—mRNA—that reprograms myeloid cells into tumor-targeting cells inside the body.

“Engineering myeloid cells with chimeric antigen receptors—CARs—holds great therapeutic promise,” writes Dr. Xiaoqian Nie, lead author of the investigation.