Presently, the Developmental Therapeutics Branch has several animal model contracts for the evaluation of antiviral agents, anti-opportunistic infection agents, and immune-based therapies. These resources are available to assist the scientific community, including the private sector, in the development of anti-HIV/AIDS therapies. This contract will provide an experimental model in which immune-based therapies can be evaluated for their ability to ameliorate or normalize immune function compromised by viral activity. The goal of the project is to focus on issues that currently do not receive adequate attention and that represent special problems for immune-based therapies, i.e., mechanism of action, optical scheduling, identification of quantifiable parameters related to in vivo efficacy, potential for positive or negative interaction between immune-based and anti-retroviral therapies, and the potential of immune-based therapies to upregulate virus expression. Examples of therapies that could be examined in the model include: cytokines, cytokine antagonists, antibody- or cell-based therapies, agents targeted to relieve virus- induced metabolic disturbances, hormones, non-specific immunomodulators, and combinations of immune-based therapies with other therapies (for example, anti-retroviral therapy).
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