Experimental HIV Therapy — Background, Administration, Protocol
A few days ago, I became ‘patient 0’ for a plasmid-based genetic therapy for treating HIV. This therapy, which I injected into my stomach fat, should allow my cells to produce ‘N6’, an anti-body that is incredibly effective at nullifying HIV.
This article will provide some of the background on the therapy, as well as how this self-experiment will be structured. This article work conclude with a risk mitigation assessment I feel might assuage some of the skeptics. Future articles will get into the mechanics of this novel therapy in greater depth.
BACKGROUND
N6 is an antibody that has been shown by NIH researchers to destroy 98.5% of HIV strains[0]. The gene to produce this antibody is rare, but has been found in at least one human. This gene was inserted into a plasmid — a circular piece of DNA — and then replicated many times over to create this therapy. In addition to the N6 gene, the plasmid contained some remnant bacteria DNA, as well as added human elements that should encourage the human cells to replicate the plasmid.
I’ve been HIV+ for six years. Most of that time I was on a HAART regimen, which brought my ‘viral load’ to an ‘undetectable level’. These past two years, however, I have been ‘untreated’ — instead relying upon natural hygiene to keep the virus at bay. This was not entirely on faith: I continued to get tested in order to evaluate whether my immune system was being compromised. During these past two years, my CD4 count never tested below 600, although my ‘viral load’ was predictably varied.
I quit my treatment for a number of reasons. To sum it up, though, would be a deep seated disgust with the current biomedicine paradigm. This topic will be explored further in forthcoming articles.
ADMINISTRATION
The treatment was shipped to two different locations, with icy packing. Currently these plasmids do suffer from loss of efficacy if they are not kept refrigerated but a change in our method will this will likely change. They were both shipped overnight delivery, and one was kept in refrigeration while the other was exposed to room temperatures for around six hours.
One the day of the treatment, I used the batch that was not kept refrigerated for my ‘allergy’ injection, and the other for my ‘treatment’ injections.
Each treatment package consisted of two small vials along with some thin caliber syringes, of the type diabetics use for their insulin. Before both the ‘allergy’ and ‘treatment’ injections, I mixed the two vials, waited around 20 minutes, and then administered. With the ‘allergy’ treatment, I barely injected any of the material, and then waited around an hour before proceeding. This was done in order to evaluate any potential irritants, and to demonstrate that this treatment is not hazardous if left unrefrigerated for a small period.
I waited until I felt confidence that my body was not reacting negatively to the material before proceeding with the main injections. In my case, this was about an hour, during which I held the Q&A Livestream session[2]. Again, I mixed the two vials. One contained the plasmids, and the other a chemical which would coax my cells into uptaking the plasmids. I administered half of the treatment into my right side belly fat, and the other half on the left side. The fat cells that are local to the injection should be the place where the N6 antibodies are produced.
PROTOCOL
One day before performing the injection, I went and got tested again, in order to establish a baseline. My CD4 count — a measure of my immune system’s vitality — was 654, which is in the normal range. My viral load was just short of 12 thousand copies (of the virus) per mL[1], which is rather low for untreated HIV, but still hundreds of times more virulent than an ‘undetectable’ patient.
I will be getting tested at least twice more, roughly two weeks and four weeks after administration. Depending on the outcome of these results, we will either continue testing in order to evaluate the lifespan of this treatment, or I will wait to try out the next version of the treatment.
If the treatment lowers my copies to <1k per mL, for at least 3 months, I would wager this treatment has been a great success.
If the therapy gets my copies of the virus to an ‘undetectable’ level for at least a year, well then, I think it may be time for a true celebration!
This is, of course, rather unlikely. We used a very low dosage of plasmids for this first run, and the researchers are still tweaking the design of the plasmid. Future versions will likely not have any bacteria genes, making it even more potent per mL.
If at first we do not succeed, we will continue trying, because there are thousands if not millions of people who can not wait!
Please follow this account for future updates on the progress of this study, and for more info on the research company, check out www.ascendance.io
