June 22, 2003

      A promising therapy for HIV is also showing promise in cancer patients and may soon be used to help autoimmune disease like lupus and type 1 diabetes. Bruce Levine, Ph.D., and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania are studying a treatment that consists of removing the white blood cells from patients, activating them in a laboratory to make them fight off cancer, and infusing them back into patients. In essence, the therapy boosts the immune system, which is why Levine says it can help many diseases that affect the immune system.

      "The overall aim is to try and use the body own immune system, engineer it in the lab in a way to make it better able to fight off cancer," says Dr. Levine. Early studies show the therapy helps raise CD4 cells, the cells that help the immune system function, in HIV patients.

      "Depending on how you engineer the cells, you can make them activated to fight off cancer, or you could expand these suppressor cells to fight off an inappropriate immune response," comments Dr. Levine. "Really, it all about turning on, or accelerating, the immune response or turning off, or dampening, an inappropriate immune response."

      Dr. Levine is excited about where this therapy will go in the future. He says, "Really, in the past 10 years, you can see the growth of cellular therapy that was not really thought about very much--or only talked about as a possibility--and it really taken off in a lot of different directions."

      --Source: "Promising Therapy for HIV, Cancer, Autoimmune Diseases," Stacie Overton, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent, Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc.,May 5, 2003