A therapeutic dendritic cell-based vaccine for HIV-1 infection

Abstract

A double-blinded, controlled study of vaccination of untreated patients with chronic human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection with 3 doses of autologous monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MD-DCs) pulsed with heat inactivated autologous HIV-1 was performed. Therapeutic vaccinations were feasible, safe, and well tolerated. At week 24 after first vaccination (primary end point), a modest significant decrease in plasma viral load was observed in vaccine recipients, compared with control subjects (P = .03). In addition, the change in plasma viral load after vaccination tended to be inversely associated with the increase in HIV-specific T cell responses in vaccinated patients but tended to be directly correlated with HIV-specific T cell responses in control subjects.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00402142.

Figure 1.

Change in plasma viral load from baseline during the study period. A, Median values. B, Individual values. Arrows represent vaccinations. Numbers at bottom represent patients at risk. P values of Mann-Whitney U test are shown at weeks 16, 24, and 48. P value of area under the curve (AUC) is also shown.

Figrue 2.

Correlation between the median change in the HIV-1-specific T cell responses with the median change in plasma viral load in patients in the DC-HIV-1 group and DC-control recipients during the study period. Each dot represents a time point.