A Whole Blood Assay to Assess Individual Patient Responses to Novel Antiviral Therapeutics
While combination anti-retroviral drugs (cART) can control active HIV-1 virus replication, they are not “curative”. Rather, these drugs are required life-long. Developing new therapeutic strategies that can reduce or clear persistent, underlying sources of virus infection will require novel clinical diagnostic assays and tools. Such tools must comprehensively evaluate virologic, immunologic and safety parameters for individuals requiring personalized therapies.
How the J-Test™ Works
- Draw blood into prefilled collection tubes
- Incubate up to 72 hours
- Separate supernatant from cells
- Perform analyses
- Select responders and/or therapeutics
Jericho Sciences’ clinically relevant assay supports personalized clinical management of novel therapeutic strategies for HIV-1 infection. Our patented technology assesses patient-specific responses across comparative conditions using the full peripheral blood immunologic compartment. Other assays exclude cells other than CD4+ T cells. Jericho’s assay more accurately reflects the natural physiologic environment of CD4+ T cells, the primary targets of HIV infection.
A successful therapeutic approach will require
- selection of clinically safe and effective combinations of therapeutics;
- patient-specific preclinical testing;
- immune-boosting agents; and
- biomarker selection.
Current latency assays fail to provide the capacity to include immune clearance responses.
Jericho’s J-Test™ Value Proposition
- Clinically Relevant: requires small volumes of fresh blood
- Patient-Specific: internally-referenced
- Short Turnaround Time: results within 1 week
- Multiparametric: cellular, viral, and immunologic parameters
- Primary Cells: immediate responses to virus
- Supports Clinical Success: enables identification of biomarkers
A key remaining question is whether virus-specific immune mechanisms including cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) can clear infected cells in ART-treated patients after latency is reversed. […] appropriate boosting of this response may be required for the elimination of the latent reservoir.”
-K Deng et al., (2015) Nature 517,7534: 381-5.
Contact us
to inquire how the J-Test™ can better support clinical success of novel antiviral therapeutics
…the heterogeneity of the reservoirs and the multiplicity of the mechanisms which underlie latency and probably vary from one patient to the other and even from one cell to the other in single patient. This observation […] emphasizes the need to evaluate the efficacy of an LRA [latency reversing agent] first ex vivo in cell cultures from a given patient before the administration of this LRA to this given patient in vivo in the context of a clinical trial.”
-G Darcis et al., (2015) PLoS Pathog 11(7)
Frequency Challenge: How Many Latent Cells in 1 mL of Blood?
| Estimated frequency of latently-infected cells (per million resting CD4+ T cells) | Blood volume to obtain 1 latently-infected cell (mL) | Blood volume to obtain 10 latently-infected cells (mL) | Reference (Click on name for link to reference) |
| 1 | 10 | 100 | Siliciano, 2013 (using QVOA) |
| 24 | 0.4 | 4.0 | Procopio, 2015 (using TILDA) |
| 60 | 0.17 | 1.7 | Ho, 2013 (using sequencing) |
| 50-100 | 0.10-0.20 | 1.0 – 2.0 | Bruner, 2019 (using IPDA) |