Stem Cell Research Aimed at Curing AIDS

Kejin Hu, a research associate, looks at a colony of human embryonic stem cells under a microscope at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at University Wisconsin-Madison March 10, 2009 in Madison, Wisconsin.

In light of President Obama’s new HIV/AIDS strategy, today we’re talking with a trio of local researchers, including Nobel Prize winning Caltech AIDS researcher Dr. David Baltimore, about new, cutting edge work being using stem cells and gene therapy to treat – and possibly one day cure – HIV/AIDS. This research focuses on engineering blood producing stems cells to resist HIV or takes super-charged HIV antibodies and puts them into stem cells which then target and attack HIV. Are engineered stem cells the answer to curing HIV?

In light of President Obama’s new HIV/AIDS strategy, today we’re talking with a trio of local researchers, including Nobel Prize winning Caltech AIDS researcher Dr. David Baltimore, about new, cutting edge work being using stem cells and gene therapy to treat – and possibly one day cure – HIV/AIDS. This research focuses on engineering blood producing stems cells to resist HIV or takes super-charged HIV antibodies and puts them into stem cells which then target and attack HIV. Are engineered stem cells the answer to curing HIV?

Guests:

David Baltimore, PhD., Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech. In 1975, at the age of 37 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco.

Paula Cannon, PhD., Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology, Pediatrics, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the USC Keck School of Medicine

Jerome (Jerry) Zack, PhD., Director, UCLA AIDS Institute and a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.