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Anti-HIV Virus Developed
liam193 writes "Wired News is reporting that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory may have developed a virus that fights the HIV virus. According to the article, 'It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS. And that scares them.'"
They're afraid of what someone who doesn't have benevolent intentions might be able to do with this approach.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Ebola is spread as easily as the common cold. What sort of properties would an Ebola/rhinovirus combination have that you're afraid of?
The reason Ebola doesn't spread very far is because it has a short incubation period, and kills very quickly. The infected don't have much of a chance to transmit it outside of the local populace---an outbreak can be identified and contained.
Contrast this with HIV, which has a tremendous incubation period, meaning that even though it's very difficult to transmit, it's spread terribly.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Since you did not bother reading the article, I'll tell you why they said that it's unfortunate that it could be done so cheaply.
It's not what's been done, it's that it could be done at all, with so much ease and so cheaply.
Now imagine what would happen if someone decides to come up with a virus that is made out of common cold, that does something that it's not supposed to.
How does contracting Hepatitis through common cold sound?
That's exactly the reason they are scared -- if this becomes commonplace, anyone can come up with cheap ways of messing around with genetics.
Now, the article also mentions how the effects are usually not known and sometimes ineffective, so we may not know for quite a while what ELSE this virus does, and what else such cures may do in the future.
It's like making a pact with the enemy's enemy -- sure, you are saved for the day. But what about down the road?
It's just a scary precedent -- I refrain from using the word bad, because we do not yet know what is going to happen. But it's always helpful to think of the worst possible scenarios, too. Especially in sensitive areas like bio-tech.
Or, you could read my immediate response to my own comment and save your breath on it. I've already noticed my mistake and would just delete the comment if I could, because I did make a total moron of myself. Realization of such came only after a Preview and a Submit :p
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
From the article: On a happier note the "spreading" of this Anti-HIV virus would probably be prolific
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
According to the original article, the engineered virus bonds itself to the HIV virus and remains in the system as long as there are HIV virus present. All the while castrating the HIV virus' ability to destroy our immune system. This gives our immune system the opportunity to destroy the HIV virus. Once the HIV virus is gone, so is the engineered virus.
At least, that's how I read it.....I've been wrong before and this certainly isn't my area of expertise.
"Lame" - Galaxar
What works in a dish of cells is often an entirely different story in an entire organism. It will be exciting when their virus manages to, say, keep an SIV-infected monkey alive for five years post-infection.
Seven years ago, a custom rhabdovirus (rabies) for selectively killing HIV-infected cells had my biotechnolgy professor all excited, but nobody's heard from them for a while since it didn't work in whole organisms.
(Why yes, I _am_ a molecular biologist....)
"I never really used Joe either but a stupid editor is a stupid editor." -D. Reed.
I am a bio major....
HIV is a double stranded DNA virus. Very different and it uses the cells own DNA polimerase to replicate itself and create teh proteins for the new virus. Very different.
If you were a bio major, you would know that HIV is a retrovirus, which carries its genome in RNA, and uses reverse transcriptase to copy itself into DNA.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
WRONG! Actually, everyone should know that HIV is a retrovirus. It has a single stranded RNA genome which is replicated through a double stranded DNA intermediate. At this point, the viral DNA is integrated into the host cell's genome. Kiss my phd.
but it might be a cure for AIDS, which is caused by sufficient amounts of HIV causing immune system malfunction.
Leor Weinberger is the grad student, and if you re-read the article you'll see that his name and the link are both mentioned there.
Even worse, there are "bug chasers" who try (sometimes not entirely consciously) to get infected, hoping to get some of the sympathy and care that people with AIDS (sometimes) get from the public. Attempting suicide, in a way. On some level, this might disappoint them. (It's a messed up world, with some pretty messed up people in it.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
i'll bite
ebola would be contained because by nature it kills within a few days. nasty visible skin lesions.
you dig?
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
That's becuase gay sex is easier. In our society, it's up to the girl to say "no", so when there is no girl...
Actually on a global per-capita basis, it's by far a heterosexual disease. And you actually meant to type "unprotected anal sex" but assumed that implied the participants were gay males. But as it turns out, anal sex is uncommon in sub-Saharan Africa. The culprit there seems to be the nature of prostitution, and the cultural practice of "dry sex", where the vagina is dried out and possibly inflamed by the application of a poultice before intercourse (this is supposed to make it more pleasurable for the man, though obviously much less so for the woman - I don't see the appeal, myself).
Even if you were correct, what would make you assume the parent poster wasn't gay?
*sigh*
you don't usually troll, or did you forget to check the AC box...
AIDS transmission does not depend on the sexuality of the persons involved. See this site for details.
Of particular note: "Vaginal or rectal intercourse without protection is very unsafe. Sexual fluids enter the body, and wherever a man's penis is inserted, it can cause small tears that make HIV infection more likely."
And, no, I should not have used the goddamn Preview mode first.
Eh, no.
The virus that they have invented can only survive if the HIV virus is present in the body. If you have no HIV in your body the "good" virus will simply die out.
"Hey baby, I have HIV, but don't worry, I also have the good virus." ... Somehow I don't think that line will get you laid.
Just a minor correction to my own post. HIV packages two positive-strand RNA molecules (positive-strand diploid, as pointed out by someone else), not negative strand. That'll teach me to post quickly while heating up dinner.
Norman Spinrad's 1995 novella, Journal of the Plague Years, describes this very thing. I wonder if the researchers were inspired by it?
First off Hepatitis is an single strain RNA virus
:) In any case, DNA/RNA is not the main issue, virus types are more individual than that, and there are variants of DNA and RNA virus lifecycles that lead to complications of designing possible therapy and safety of therapy (sigh). One of the authors himself was quoted as saying he doesn't know if the new virus will do harm or not.
HIV is a double stranded DNA virus
Parent should be modded down for misinformation: this is plain wrong, HIV is a RNA virus with DNA in its reproduction pathway. Of the different hepatitis viruses, some are based on DNA (with RNA in their reproduction pathway -- hep.B) and some others are based on RNA. I hope the parent poster does a whole lot more revision before his exams
-wb-
virus n. pl. viruses
I'm curious, do you mean American English? Because according to the dictionary defining American English, you are wrong. You are also wrong according to Dictionary.com. You are also wrong according to Wikipedia. The correct plural of virus, in American English (I don't have a copy of the official Oxford English Dictionary, which defines British English), is viruses. The use of the term virii originated in the 90s on warez sites/forums.
Bzzzt. Other than numerals, Latin does not have a declension that works out for any noun I know of to "ii" (the plural of cactus is cacti in Latin or cactuses in English). Read this: http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-viru s.html
- Matthew
I don't have a
That is the current quandry. Anti-retroviral therapy, with its combination of drugs, currently is very effective. Basically the medicine stops the virus from duplicating (the overall viral load will go down), and that lets the bodies infection fighting resources recover (increased T cells). The problem with current treatments is the medications become toxic after long periods of time. Otherwise healthy HIV (+) patients are having liver failure due to the effects of the medications on the liver.
The problem with people who have full blown AIDS is they have lost so much protection, the body becomes very susecptable to all sorts of nasties, sorta like an unpatched Windows box.A nice little primer on HIV can be found at the CDC
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
Except that there is no basis for virii being the plural of virus in Latin whatsoever. The plural of murus (wall) is muri. The plural of filius (son) is filii. Apparently someone thought virus should have a plural ending in -ii because they saw the plural of filius and other second declension nouns ending in -ius and thought that all nouns ending in -us ended in -ii.
The confusion doesn't end there though. There is no example of the word virus being pluralized in any classical works. This wouldn't be a problem except that virus is an irregular noun. It's a neuter noun that is declined like a masculine second declension noun (except the accusative case which is also virus). In Latin (and Greek as well) neuter nouns have plurals that end in -a. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. This is one of the most reliable rules in Latin (and in Latin most rules have very few exceptions in the first place). As such viri can't be the plural of virus either.
Then there are some people who upon hearing that virus is neuter mistake it for a third declension neuter noun and say that the plural of virus should be virora just as the plural of corpus is corpora. However, this cannot be the case since virus is known to have the genitive singular form viri and if it were a third declension noun it would have the form viroris.
Then there are other people who say that virus is a fourth declension noun but this doesn't make much sense since the genitive form doesn't match what would be expected for a fourth declension noun and as for as I know all fourth declension neuter nouns end in -u and not -us.
My best guess is that the plural of virus would be virus since this follows the pattern of other second declension neuter nouns with gender confusion issues. However, it's probably best to avoid all of this confusion and just pluralize it as viruses.
And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I was wondering how they "spent" the grad student.
Conventional theory is that if mother is HIV positive, her baby will be positive as well. If male (father) is positive, his sperm will contain HIV virus. This is partially true. A baby born of an HIV(+) mother, initally is HIV (+), because the baby carries the mothers antibodies. After a period of time (I believe it is six months or so, its been a while for my OB nursing) the baby will convert to sero negative. I've heard of children 10 years later who are still negative.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
Oops, typo. What I meant to say is that the plural of virus would probably be vira.
Would post editing really be that bad of a thing? It could work if all moderations were nullified and you were allowed to see earlier revisions of the post.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
The heterosexual epidemic never materialized? What the hell do you call the AIDS crisis in Africa? Oh, right, they're not all white American christians and therefore don't count.
_nfotxn
I work in the Arkin group, and Leor is a friend of mine.
Here is the reference and the PDF of the actual article that the research featured in the Wired report is based off of:
PDF: http://tinyurl.com/yu5ur
Leor S. Weinberger, David V. Schaffer, Adam P. Arkin. "Theoretical Design of a Gene Therapy To Prevent AIDS but Not Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection". 2003. Journal of Virology. 77(18). 10028-10036.
---
~taltman
I think some people don't understand that AIDS is a syndrome, while HIV is the actual virus that causes it. AIDS means the immune system has reached a certain point of ineffectiveness due to HIV. That's why it can take years to be diagnosed with AIDS--HIV is destroying the immune system during that time. The period of time after HIV infection causes AIDS varies with each case.
> The tissue destined to make up the labia minor,
labia major, and vaginal canal on a woman becomes, on a man, the shaft of the penis.
The homologous (i.e same) tissue as the labia majora of females becomes the scrotal sac in males. Remember back when you were a young kid and you had a big ridge going down the mid-line of your sac? That was the fusion line of the two "lips".
HIV is AIDS. What the "cure" virus (refered to henceforth as Cure)does is to "eat" the HIV virus. It doesn't kill it all, but it does kill enough of it to keep it from adversly affecting the patient. Apparently it is also transmissible as is HIV/AIDS, which means that yes eventually everyone (you know what I mean) would catch it. Making it kind of like a cold, something that gets passed around and the only reason it survives is that it is little more than an annoyance.
The funniest part is I know I read a story that had almost the same principle involved, but instead of being manmade it was a mutation that had evolved on its own. Eventually the entire populace was deliberatly infected with the harmless version of HIV/AIDS in order to keep the deadly version from going nuts. Another good example would be smallpox. Nearly everyone was exposed to it in the last century, and it was so completely destroyed that cases of it are nearly unheard of in the civilized world.
I guess I would say that yes it is a "cure" of a sort, it is a permanent solution to the problem (like setting a broken bone, it doesn't make it perfect like it was before, but once it heals it is fixed without further treatments being needed)
No, Bush isn't doing anything about AIDS.
Last year, he tripled the budget for foriegn aid earmarked to fighting AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean to $15 Billion over 3 years. There are lots of things to criticize Bush about, but this may be the one thing he's done right.
Just two comments (and a closing statement, LOL!):
1. Just glancing at the article published under peer review (in Journal of Virology), one assumption that the authors made is that the model of virus dynamics in vivo is correct. Although it is the currently accepted model, it does not mean that it holds true -- I fear that a few more years of data will tell us truly if the mathematical model can be used, especially when pertaining to treatment via "anti-viral viruses."
2. For it to work in vivo, the "anti-virus" has to replicate near those cells/tissues that is actively replicating HIV. In fact, it probably works best if the "anti-virus" can superinfect the same cells infected by HIV -- that's the way anti-sense RNA works, in other words anti-sense RNA needs to anneal with the sense RNA of HIV. The problem is, HIV has mechanisms to reduce superinfection (downregulation of coreceptor comes to mind). The more you have to add to the anti-virus to evade such obstacles, the more difficult you make it -- i.e. the bulkier the virus, viral fitness plummets.
Only empirical studies in vivo will tell us if their treatment will work. As a grad student studying HIV, the news sounds exciting. But just like any "discoveries" made in this field, I have to take it with a grain of salt. Why? Well, think about the history of this epidemic and compare with other epidemics in modern history -- like polio and smallpox. What is taking so long for researchers to develop a vaccine with so much better technology than Jenner, Salk or Sabin ever had in their hands? The answer is in the virus itself, it has become so adept at evading the host immune system and usurping that system for its own end, that it is also destroying our body's chances of ever mounting a good enough response to keep it in check or eradicating it. I wonder if we ever will be able to develop a vaccine, and if we do, what will it take? More research into the biology of the virus? Or more research into our immune systems' biology? I personally think that studies in immunology is the key to answering this.
Linux at home
Not according to the article. This virus doesn't replicate itself, and it can't survive on it's own. The only way it can spread is by piggybacking the HIV, which would be beneficial in supressing the HIV in newly infected persons. However, I agree that benefitial mutations (for the virus) would still be a major concern.
This work was published in the Journal of Virology, Sept 2003. Somewhat old news. Abstract follows. Full article in the following link http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/18/10028
Recent reports confirm that, due to the presence of long-lived, latently infected cell populations, eradication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) from infected patients by using antiretroviral drugs will be exceedingly difficult. An alternative to virus eradication may be to use gene therapy to induce a pseudo-latent state in virus-producing cells, thus transforming HIV-1 into a lifelong, but manageable, virus. Conditionally replicating HIV-1 (crHIV-1) gene therapy vectors provide an avenue for subduing HIV-1 expression in infected cells (by creating a parasite, crHIV-1, of the parasite HIV-1), potentially reducing the HIV-1 set point and delaying AIDS onset. Development of crHIV-1 vectors has proceeded in vitro, but the requirements for a crHIV-1 vector to proliferate and persist in vivo have not been explored. We expand a widely accepted mathematical model of HIV-1 in vivo dynamics to include a crHIV-1 gene therapy virus and derive a simple criterion for designing crHIV-1 viruses that will persist in vivo. The model introduces only two new parameters--HIV-1 inhibition and crHIV-1 production--and both can be experimentally engineered and controlled. Analysis demonstrates that crHIV-1 gene therapy can indefinitely reduce HIV-1 set point to levels comparable to those achieved with highly active antiretroviral therapy, provided crHIV-1 production is more efficient than HIV-1. Paradoxically, highly efficient therapeutic inhibition of HIV-1 was found to be disadvantageous. Thus, the field may benefit by shifting the search for more potent antiviral genes toward engineering optimized therapy viruses that package ultraefficiently while downregulating viral production moderately.
Average vagina is only a couple of inches long, that's why you can feel the cervix with your finger if you push one right in. It then stretches to accomodate the penis (whatever length it is) during intercourse.
Well, that's one sentence I didn't think I'd be writing today...
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
The really interesting information is a reverse-engineered interpreter. Who cracks the ribosome code will harness the lathe of heaven.
I think you're talking about a DNA Microarray.
It allows you to get the expression profile of the cell. More info here.
Flash tutorial here.
Interestingly enough, it's the reverse transcriptases that are used by viruses like HIV to embed themselves in our genome that allowed cDNA technology and therefore Microarray technology to become a reality. We could have made the complimentary DNA strands that the messenger RNA binds to using other methods, but it would have been much harder.
Actually this isn't as funny as it sounds. In normal drug trials you are testing something that can only affect the individual. But in case the treatment is another virus that can be propogated between individuals. If the virus mutates into something that is harmful then what started out as a simple clinical trial (and might not have passed into main stream medicine) could turn into a problem as bad as HIV itself. So some form of containment would need to be in place.