HIV and cancer teams double up to seek out new disease killers

LONDON (Reuters) HIV experts at an international conference which started yesterday 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 fightoff 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. Princess Diana LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s Prince William and Harry talk about the last phone call they ever had with their mother, Princess Diana, before she died, in a new documentary.

“Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy” is being released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death in a Paris car crash on Aug 31, 1997.

“I think you get the private Diana,” Nick Kent, the film’s executive producer, told Reuters. “Nobody has ever told this story from the point of view of the two people who knew her better than anyone else, and loved her the most: her sons.”

The princes recall their mother’s sense of humour, with Prince Harry describing her as “one of the naughtiest parents”. They also recall the pain of their parents’ divorce, and how they dealt with the news of her death and its aftermath.

While the film addresses such aspect of Diana’s life as her charity work involving HIV and landmines, it shies away from more controversial issues, such as extra-marital affairs.