A Fighting Chance

Baylor is developing a vaccine that could strengthen the immune systems of patients with HIV.

Baylor Research Institute, led by a team of researchers and physicians from the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research (BIIR), is beginning research on an HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) vaccine.

HIV affects the immune system and causes the disease known as AIDS. Today, people with HIV are treated with expensive medications, often taken in combination, which requires strict compliance and can have unpleasant side effects.

Baylor Research Institute has received grants from two French agencies, INSERM (the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research) and ANRS (the French National Agency for AIDS Research). INSERM funds research units worldwide and has named BIIR as its first research unit in the United States.

BIIR researchers are using the funds to develop an HIV vaccine based on the cancer vaccine developed by BIIR that fortifi es the patient’s own disease-fighting immune cells. The vaccine will be given to patients with HIV who are already taking medication. In time, researchers hope the patients will be able to stop taking their medication.

“The objective is to stimulate each patient’s immune system so they will stay healthier longer,” says Louis Sloan, M.D., a physician on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

A total of 70 patients from Dr. Sloan’s practice will be offered the opportunity to participate in the randomized study, which could generate useful data in about a year. Half of the participants will receive the vaccine. If it proves successful, the other half of the participants also will receive the vaccine.

“We hope to really help these patients,” says Jacques Banchereau, Ph.D., director of BIIR. “They might be able to reduce the amount of medications they take or stop taking medications entirely, which is our dream.”

What’s more, BIIR is beginning work on a preventive HIV vaccine, also funded by the ANRS. The vaccine is based on previous BIIR research that has been funded by a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, one of the National Institutes of Health. Baylor hopes to begin the clinical trial for this vaccine within two years.

In the meantime, the development of a vaccine to treat HIV demonstrates Baylor’s role in the “changing face of medicine,” says Michael Ramsay, M.D., president of the Baylor Research Institute.

“Through the international collaboration of the scientists and clinicians of Baylor, together with INSERM and the ANRS,” he says, “we are bringing significant effort and advanced research to finding a treatment for HIV and other critical infectious diseases.”

By Amy Lynn Smith