Argos begins trial of HIV therapy

The target population for the study is patients with durable viral suppression from highly active antiretroviral therapy.

AGS-004 is a personalized RNA-loaded dendritic cell-based immunotherapy that is designed to stimulate the patient’s immune system to target and destroy the patient’s own unique viral burden.

“Non-personalized HIV immunotherapies are unable to raise cytotoxic T lymphocytes against HIV antigens, fail to induce T cell memory, and, most importantly, do not provide antiviral protection against the patient’s own particular virus,” said Jean-Pierre Routy, of McGill University Health Center and Royal Victoria Hospital.

“With two other clinical trials ongoing in metastatic renal cell carcinoma and B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, our next-generation technology is applicable to a broad array of indications and may present a potentially paradigm-shifting treatment method for infectious diseases and cancer,” said John Bonfiglio, president and CEO of Argos.”

The primary study objective is to evaluate patient-specific anti-viral response to the AGS-004 immunotherapeutic following four doses over four weeks. Secondary trial objectives are to evaluate its safety, additional immune induction profiles, and the feasibility of production of AGS-004.