11.1 Gene Therapy for HIV/ AIDS

It is well known that HIV virus is the causative agent for AIDS, This disease is now widely spread in different parts of the world. The search for a cure is one of the great challenges to human health. There are however a number of ways to manage the HIV disease, but little success towards the virus itself. Gene therapy showed a promising potential for long term treatment of HIV infection (Gilboa, 1994 Ho et al 1995, Wer et al 1995)

Current HIV gene therapy trials are mainly ex-vivo techniques.  Hematopoietic cells (mature T cells, or Hematopoietic stem / progenitor cells) are isolated from the patient and utilized as the cellular vehicle of the therapeutic genes. The therapeutic gene is introduced into target cells using recombinant viral vectors. The transduced cells (those cells that take up and express the therapeutic transgene) are then reinfused intravenously into the number of transduced cells before the reinfusion.