Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Opdivo cancer medicine has been found to eradicate HIV-infected cells without causing any side effects in an HIV patient who was being treated for lung cancer after relapsing following surgery and chemotherapy in a Paris hospital.
In an Annals of Oncology study published to coincide with World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, researchers found the first evidence that Opdivo, also known as nivolumab, may be able to eradicate HIV-infected cells in humans.
A 51-year-old man, who had been diagnosed HIV-positive in 1995 and with non-small cell lung cancer in 2015, received 15 injections of nivolumab every 14 days from December 2016. The researchers observed "a drastic and persistent decrease" in the reservoirs of cells in the body where the human immunodeficiency virus is able to hide from attack by anti-viral therapy.
"Drugs that inhibit immune checkpoints such as PD-1 are well known in the cancer field as being very efficient at restoring immune defenses by removing the brake, enabling the immune cells to spring into action to reject the cancer cells," Jean-Philippe Spano, a professor and head of the medical oncology department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, wrote in the study.
"It was thought, but until now not demonstrated, that inhibitors of immune check-points could, in a similar way, wake up dormant HIV-infected cells and also the immune defenses against the virus," he wrote.
Reservoirs of HIV-infected cells — which lie dormant and cannot be eradicated by anti-retroviral therapy or by a weakened immune system — are found in the immune system in organs including the brain, genital tract and the bone marrow. If scientists could clear these reservoirs of HIV-infected cells, the virus might be completely eradicated, hence curing patients with HIV.
Opdivo is a PD-1 inhibitor used to treat advanced cancers including skin, bladder and non-small cell lung cancer.
