A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, July 23, 2017
HIV and cancer teams double up to seek out new disease killers
Kate Kelland-JULY 22, 2017
LONDON (Reuters) - HIV experts at an international conference starting on Saturday are keenly courting colleagues in oncology to explore whether advances in harnessing the immune system against cancer can help the search for a cure for AIDS.
LONDON (Reuters) - HIV experts at an international conference starting on Saturday are keenly courting colleagues in oncology to explore whether advances in harnessing the immune system against cancer can help the search for a cure for AIDS.
The two diseases, while very different in many ways, have some key
crossover points when it comes to developing new treatments, specialists
say - most notably the immune system, its crucial T-cells, and its
ability to fight-off invaders.
"The parallels between HIV persistence and cancer are striking," said
Francoise Barré-Sinoussi, former president of the International AIDS
Society (IAS), which is hosting a week-long conference in Paris.
"In both cases, the immune response is unable to target and clear HIV-infected cells and tumour cells."
Scientists working in both diseases also face similar challenges in
tracking the size, number and spread of infected cells, she said, which
can hide out in reservoirs in hard-to-reach tissues.
HIV experts see this as one of the key links to cancer medicine, which
in recent years has seen the development of a new generation of drugs
that target and re-arm the immune system, rather that just poisoning
tumour cells.
Among the drugs in this new class are medicines known as PDL-1 or PD1
inhibitors that engage and revitalise the patient's own immune system to
attack the cancer.
Sharon Lewin, an HIV expert at the University of Melbourne and co-chair
of the IAS's HIV Cure and Cancer forum, describes this progress in
oncology as a "revolution" which has led to "some spectacular successes"
that are now being eyed by AIDS researchers.
"These treatments basically reinvigorate an exhausted immune system,
exhausted T-cells. They reverse the dampening down of the immune system
that happens in cancer," she told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"In HIV, exactly the same thing happens - the T-cells become exhausted and can no longer function as efficiently."
While HIV researchers are keen to see whether new-generation cancer
drugs could show promise in HIV, there has also been a caution about
conducting what might be risky trials in people whose illness is well
managed with safe, effective AIDS drugs.
Because of that, the first clinical data - some of it presented at the
IAS on Saturday - is in patients with both cancer and HIV, Lewin
explained.
"This is the first scientific meeting where we're getting a chance to see what these drugs look like in HIV," she said.
Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Andrew Bolton