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Bonus: AIDS Drug has IBD benefits

ABIVAX, a French company, is progressing nicely on their clinical trials of ABX464, a small molecule drug that inhibits the replication of HIV. The medicine targets the gut, which is the major reservoir of HIV in the body. This is being developed as a "functional cure" to prevent rebound of the virus from reservoirs once anti-retroviral therapies stop.

Their current trial data revealed that the vaccine has a strong anti-inflammatory effect in the gut by stimulating a significant increase of the cytokine IL-22 in macrophages.

IL-22 induces antimicrobial molecules and proliferative and antiapoptotic pathways that help prevent tissue damage and aid in its repair. These processes play a beneficial role in IBD by enhancing intestinal barrier integrity and epithelial innate immunity.

This reminds me of reports last month that Entyvio being a functional cure for AIDS in monkey experiments.
 
I'm personally not a believer in the HIV theory of causing AIDS. I believe there are other explanations that can be responsible for the immune damaging condition. There are others that believe similar. As an example I thought this a nice interview of nobel prize winner Kary Mullis on how he came to doubt the HIV theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL3cAS3YUKM

With that said, legally if a doctor came back and said I tested positive for HIV, I would take steps to protect myself, and others from me. That is the law.

I consider myself lucky in some respects when it comes to HIV. When I first became ill with my IBD condition was in the 80s and AIDS was a great fear. I wasn't a high risk individual, but was tested for HIV several times, along with all the other tests, which came back negative. I consider myself fortunate as the first "cure" for HIV was the toxic medication high dose AZT.

I have my doubts this new medication will help those with IBD conditions, but of course despite my beliefs, it would be nice if it helped some people.
 
wonder if they'll start any trials soon (for ibd)..?
Yes, I forgot to mention this in my original post, but they are planning to start a preliminary study on this aspect.

“This newly discovered anti-inflammatory effect suggests that our lead compound, ABX464, may be able to modulate important disease parameters not only in HIV, but also in other inflammatory conditions like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD),” said Prof. Jamal Tazi, and Prof. Hartmut Ehrlich, M.D., CEO of ABIVAX added “We are rapidly responding to these encouraging new data. ABIVAX is planning to start a clinical proof-of-concept study of ABX464 to treat IBD during 2017.”
 
...
I have my doubts this new medication will help those with IBD conditions, but of course despite my beliefs, it would be nice if it helped some people.
Skepticism is a good quality to have regarding these things. Who knows if it'll do anything. It's just that they've seen signals in the preliminary data to warrant looking further into the phenomenon and can justify spending the money to investigate the anti-inflammatory benefits in IBD.

The other nice thing to consider is that they've already done the early phase safety studies, so they can bypass that as they start looking at the IBD angle.
 
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