boiMAG.com "Strut" Fashion

STRUT Model

Alex Mara

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EDITORIAL

Chicago & Suburbs: DSE (Delivery Service Enterprises) World Wide Distribution: AnyFlip Media Network

Publisher: BOI Magazine, Inc. Editor: Nate Daniels Feature Editor: John Stephens Media: Sylvia Shields Graphic Design: Titanium Graphics

layout & design Titanium Graphics, Inc. Layout Specialist: Jerry Ellison

DISTRIBUTION

COVER

Strut, World AIDS Day Annual Fashion Show Photos provided by: Northalsted Business Alliance, Del Nakamura, RickMajewski, StevenKoch: GoPride

VIEW boiMAGazine ONLINE at: www.boiMAG.com BOI Magazine, Inc. © 2000−2019. All rights reserved

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Meiling Jin

Avelino Martinez

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Brian Boyle

WORLD AIDS DAY

FASHION SHOW Name of the show:

“STRUT”

Years in Existence:

This is the 11th year anniversary

Beneficiaries:

Project Vida and South Side Help Center Both organizations have been serving the community for over 20 years.

Date of Event"

Sunday, December 1st, 2019 Location

Moe's Cantina 155 W Kinzie Chicago, Illinois Produced by:

MadMan Productions Time:

Doors: 4:30pm Reception: 5pm Showtime: 6pm Designers & Models:

Designers The School at the Art Institute of Chicago 26 models Tickets:

General admission: $27 Reserved: First & Second rows: $37 Table (for four): $40

Cover Model:

Alex Mara

Photographer:

Studio Meiling Productions Model Stylist:

John Fleming, Jr. boiMAG

Carmen Christina

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Michael Scanlon

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Meiling Jin

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Brian Boyle

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Bryan Chapman

Michael Scanlon

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Brian Boyle

Is there a cure for HIV AIDS on the horizon?

A Maryland medical and pharmaceutical company has submitted an application to the U.S Food and Drug Administration for a gene therapy it says they believe they may have a potential cure for HIV/AIDS, which could help people living with the disease.

American Gene Technologies in Rockville said based on lab tests, the single dose gene therapy has a “high potential” to be effective.

The company American Gene Technologies (AGT) filed a drug application with the Federal Drug Administration, said the therapy, AGT103-T, is a genetically modified product made from a person’s own cells that focuses on repairing damage to the immune system caused by HIV. The single dose drug has a simple purpose, to eradicate HIV once and for all. “Our aim is to treat HIV disease with an innovative cell and gene therapy that reconstitutes immunity to HIV and will control virus growth in the absence of antiretroviral drugs,” the company’s chief science officer C. David Pauza said.

“We need to move these people from anti-retroviral control to permanent immunity and we think this project may be able to do that,” AGT CEO Jeff Galvin said.

An estimated 1.1-million people in the United States are living with HIV and AIDS. The company expects to hear from the FDA before the end of the year and if their application is approved, clinical trials could begin as soon as January.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says 1.1 million people in the U.S. have HIV. However it could still be several years before the drug actually gets final approval and goes to market. boiMAG 23

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Why Maryland is Leading the race?

For those that lived through the devastation and terror of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s, effective treatment, let alone a cure for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), seemed unrealistic.

Some three decades later, a host of Maryland life science companies and research organizations are getting closer to making what was once unthinkable, a reality.

So little was known about this devastating immune disorder in the early phases of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the BioHealth Capital Region was the epicenter of HIV/AIDS research, with much of this groundbreaking research occurring within the lab of the now famed NIH researcher, Dr. Robert Gallo. In 1983 and 1984 Gallo and his collaborators co-discovered and confirmed that the virus responsible for the killer disease known as AIDS was human T lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III). Gallo and the company went on to develop the first test that identified the virus in humans, the HIV-antibody blood test.

By 1983 the disease had started to spread globally. By 1999, approximately 33 million people across the globe were living with HIV and an estimated 14,000,000 million people had died from AIDS since the epidemic began.

The 1995 approval of Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment (HAART), which was the result of the remarkable, collaborative efforts of the scientific community, led to the reduction of AIDSrelated deaths and hospitalizations by 60-80%. A short time later what was once a three-drug cocktail had been transformed into a pill taken once daily by HIV sufferers.

As of 2017, 19.5 million people are

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estimated to be receiving antiretroviral treatment globally. While one of the greatest achievements in medical history, HAART and subsequent treatment forms do not cure HIV. Within just weeks of stopping treatment, the virus returns to full strength and chronic inflammation caused by suppressed HIV can lead to adverse health effects over the long term. Current HIV treatments control it but do not cure it; in fact, research shows that those being treated for HIV are more susceptible to other diseases and health risks at an earlier age.

Despite the amazing advancements in HIV/AIDS treatments, HIV/AIDS continues to be a major global health threat.

These Maryland life science organizations are on a mission to cure HIV Multiple Maryland companies and research institutions are on the leading-age of HIV research and development, making the state a hotbed of potential next-generation HIV therapies and, possibly, the source of a cure for this devastating global health issue. Some of the most promising cure candidates are coming out of Maryland’s thriving cell and gene therapy cluster.

Let’s take a look at some of the amazing progress that’s happening right now across Maryland and take a deeper dive into five of the leading organizations that are on a mission to develop the first HIV cure.

American Gene Technologies (AGT), Rockville, Maryland

AGT is a gene and cell therapy company with a proprietary gene-delivery platform to rapidly develop gene and cell therapies to cure infectious diseases, cancers and monogenic disorders.

One of its lead gene therapy products is a potential functional cure for HIV. AGT just announced that it has submitted the IND to (Continued on a following page >>)

(Maryland Continued ) ....the FDA for a Phase I

trial of its autologous cell therapy for HIV. AGT is currently developing a highly innovative HIV treatment strategy that uses the tools of genetic medicine for immunotherapy to potentially create a functional cure for HIV. “If we are successful, patients will be able to throw away their medication, will not progress to AIDS, and will be immune to future HIV exposures.”

Jeff Galvin, CEO AGT The potential single dose treatment would be delivered as a genetically-modified cell product made from a patient’s own cells.

AGT’s strategy is unique because it focuses on the key immune cells responsible for catalyzing strong immunity against a virus.

AGT’s treatment strategy seeks to protect these cells; one of the first cell subsets to be disabled by HIV. This subset of cells is understood to be critical to building an immune response to any virus. If achieved, the cell’s natural process of immunity is restored and any future rise of HIV in the body will be attacked by an individual’s own immune system.

The Institute of Human Virology (IHV), University of Maryland, Baltimore IHV is part of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is a recognized leader in the virology field. IHV was founded by Dr. Robert C. Gallo who codiscovered HIV and developed the first HIV blood test.

This potential HIV/AIDS treatment seeks to neutralize the different strains of HIV found across the globe from the moment of infection. IHV’s HIV/AIDS research is …” focused on the CCR5 chemokine receptor that plays a crucial role in HIV-1 infection and as such offers an important potential therapeutic target.” (IHV Website). IHV is striving to develop biological HIV/AIDS treatments that are less expensive, have fewer adverse impacts and are more accessible to patients around the globe.

Lentigen, Gaithersburg, Maryland Lentigen is a leading provider of custom lentiviral vectors used in cell and gene therapy research and development. For HIV, Lentigen is at the forefront of efforts to use Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR) T-Cell therapy to improve the treatment of HIV and possibly cure it.

Lentigen, along with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, has been conducting a promising study of the use of CAR T in the treatment of HIV. The researchers developed duoCAR T cells that were able to kill white blood cells infected with a range of HIV variants.

Testing in mice also produced promising results. Mice with humanized immune systems were simultaneously injected with CAR T cell and HIV-infected human cells into their spleens. When the spleens were examined a week later, five of the six mice had no identifiable HIV DNA and their viral levels had decreased by 97.5% (source: Science).

Institute for Bioscience & Biotechnology Research (IBBR), College Park, Maryland

IBBR is a joint research enterprise of the University of Maryland, College Park and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Last year IBBR received $3.9M from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to “…develop a multi-specific, single-agent antibody therapeutic against HIV-1 to block virus infection and to clear the reservoir of HIV-infected cells from the body,” according to an IBBR press release from November 2018.

Dr. Li and his group have produced bi and trispecific antibodies that demonstrated neutralization of 95% of circulating HIV-1 viruses.

The team is now working to optimize their multivalent antibody constructs to “ recognize Env proteins on the surface of latently infected host cells, and to signal other immune system components to destroy those cells that contain the hard-to-reach viral pockets, or as the team calls them, a “viral reservoir.”

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