Researchers conducting a study on the use of the drug Keytruda, produced by Merck to treat cancer, for patients with HIV, which causes AIDS, and who also have cancer, said that immunotherapy may also help expel the virus from cells. human immunity.
The researchers added that this reveals an interesting area for studying the treatment of chronic infection with the “HIV” virus, according to what Reuters reported.
Currently, antiretroviral therapies allow many people with HIV to lead a normal life, but the drugs do not mean that the body will get rid of the virus completely, as the remaining stock of virus means that patients have not really recovered from the infection.
Keytruda, also known as pembrolizumab, is a monoclonal antibody designed to help the body’s immune system fight cancer by blocking a protein known as programmed death receptor that tumors use to evade disease-fighting cells.
These drugs work by releasing molecular brakes or checkpoints that tumors use to evade the body’s immune system, allowing immune cells to recognize and attack cancer cells in the same way they would fight infection with bacteria or viruses.
An international team of researchers said that it had found evidence that these drugs are able to nullify the latency of the HIV virus, that is, the virus’s ability to “hide” inside the cells of people living with it, depending on an antiviral treatment.
The study, published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, included 32 people with both cancer and HIV through the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
The participants were also being treated with effective antiviral drugs to suppress HIV.
“Pimbrolizumab has the potential to disrupt the HIV reservoir,” Professor Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Duarte Institute for Infection and Immunology in Melbourne, Australia, said in a statement.
Her group examined blood samples from study participants before and after the treatment.
Lewin said work on these samples will continue to understand how the drug modulates the immune response to HIV.