Why no HIV stem cell research in UK?
I’m a patient at Nottingham and London’s Chelsea and Westminster hospitals and I address this letter to all consultants I’ve had contact with, and who I now want to find a long-term solution for HIV patients. I’ve been hoping that someone would start using stem cell research to grow CD4 cells. After all, if this could be done, in the long-term we could be looking at simply replacing HIV patients’ missing cells. Surely this could be the future for HIV treatment, without involving drugs and their side-effects, and help to normalise our immune systems? Dr Mike Youle from the Royal Free hospital tells me that, to his knowledge, there’s no research in this area. While Svilen Konov at i-Base tells me Dr Mark Bower at Imperial College has done some small studies in HIV patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But no-one seems to be doing research into growing CD4 cells as a treatment for HIV. HIV is not included, nor is there an HIV consultant listed, in the 2005 UK Stem Cell Initiative report (
