Celgene's cancer drug Istodax could re-activate dormant HIV and allow it to be detected
An anti-cancer drug developed by US biotech company Celgene Corp (Nasdaq: CELG) can re-activate dormant HIV which allows it to be detected, Danish scientists have reported.
The research, led by Ole Schmeltz Søgaard of Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, was presented at the 20th International AIDS Conference taking place in Australia.
The drug in question, Istodax (romidepsin), is currently licensed to treat T-cell lymphoma, but in this study it was investigated as an HIV therapy. The team in Aarhus gave three infusion of romidepsin once-weekly to six HIV-positive adults who were already taking antiretroviral AIDS drugs with an undetectable viral load. They found that romidepsin increased the virus production in HIV-infected cells between 2.1 and 3.9 above normal and that the viral load in the blood was increased to measurable levels in five out of six patients.
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