Pictured: Preparing for an injection. The drug studied in the HIV bowel study is delivered by injection.
By UH Med Now
Scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi medical school were part of a clinical trial led by the Mt. Sinai Icahn School of Medicine of a drug which shows promise in the search for a cure for HIV infection.
The trial centered on the intestines, which researchers say are specifically targeted by HIV at the earliest stage of infection.
The study, though small, involved a drug already on the market for Crohn’s Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome and the lead researcher at New York’s Mount Sinai says it is a significant outcome.
“So I think if you have both HIV and inflammatory bowel disease then you should ask your physician about the possibility of going on this treatment which is anti alpha beta 7 therapy which is also known as vedolizumab or Entyvio,” said Dr. Saurabh Mehandru, MD, lead author of the research at Mt. Sinai Icahn School of Medicine:
UH John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) Tropical Medicine investigators Ivo N. SahBandar, Eun-young Park, Michael Corley and Lishomwa Ndhlovu helped analyze data for Mt. Sinai.
“As part of the Hawaiʻi to Zero (H20) cure and prevention initiative, we continue to pursue potential new therapies for HIV remission and Vedolizumab may contribute to this early effort in this objective,” said Dr. Ndhlovu.
The drug trial results using venolizumab (sold by the brand name Entyvio) to counter HIV in the gut was published October 3, 2018 in the prestigious journal SCIENCE Translational Medicine.
The full interview video from lead scientists at Mt. Sinai is courtesy of the Icahn School of Medicine: