ChemotherapyA work prepared by Canadian scientists in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from USA, could be a new combined strategy to eliminate HIV in the body, using the Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) with molecules directed against cell proliferation, such as those used to kill certain types of cancer.

Could the antitumor drugs improve the response of HIV patients on antiviral treatment? The answer, according to a study published by the journal Nature Medicine, seems to be yes. These treatments may eliminate the “trick” used by the AIDS virus to remain “hidden” in some of the body’s immune cells.

Until now, explains Dr. Jean-Pierre Routy, McGill Institute of Montreal (Canada), antiretroviral therapy has met with an insurmountable obstacle to overcome any remaining body of HIV: the AIDS virus is able to “sneak , forming reservoirs in T cells belonging to the body’s defense system, which appears to be immune to treatment. Chemotherapy may be used against HIV.

“Our study demonstrates for the first time that HIV reservoirs are not formed by a lack of potency of antiretroviral drugs, but because the virus can” hide “in two different types of immune system cells,” explained the researchers.

The solution could pass for the use of targeted therapies (as is already happening with some types of cancer) to attack those cells containing the virus, while strengthening the immune system to be able to continue producing new healthy cells.

“The idea would be to use drugs such as Glivec (a treatment against a type of leukemia), whose performance does not work depending on the cell cycle, but controls the replication of malignant cells,” explains Routy.

That is, once hidden in immune cells, HIV becomes dependent on them: if they live, the virus survives, if they are removed, the pathogen also disappears. And antiretroviral therapy is able to remove only the copies of the virus circulating in the body, not taking advantage of immune cells to go unnoticed.

The cells of our defense system, as noted Routy, have a limited capacity to divide, but do so in two very specific circumstances. “After an infection (or receiving a vaccine) or by stimulation of interleukin-7, a hormone that prolongs the life of immune cells and, therefore, allows the virus to replicate when the cell divides.

And, as the scientist concludes, these two mechanisms are linked to both cell division and the multiplication of HIV virus in its core. “We can interfere with these mechanisms,” welcomes, “and we have clinical trials underway to multiply the immune reaction against the infected cells in the presence of antiretroviral therapy.

While that itself, as apparent in the work, still be some years before this hypothesis can become a reality for patients with AIDS.