Friday, December 05, 2008

Researchers Exploring Gene Therapy To Fight AIDS

Source: University of California - Davis
Date: December 5, 2008

Summary:

The apparent success of a case in which German doctors cured a man of AIDS using a bone marrow transplant comes as no surprise to Gerhard Bauer, a UC Davis stem cell researcher. Bauer has been working for more than 10 years on a similar cure for AIDS based on replacing the devastated immune system of an HIV-infected patient with stem cells that have been engineered to resist human immunodeficiency syndrome. Bauer plans to present the preliminary results of his latest research at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society for Hematology in San Francisco on Sunday, December 6, 2008, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Moscone Center. He and his UC Davis research team will present a poster detailing the development of a mouse model that allows pre-clinical testing of their new gene-therapy protocol, which they hope will pave the way for human clinical trials within five years.