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Possible Breakthrough for AIDS Cure
kryonD writes "Researchers believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do. While most of the community is still hesitant to comment on this until it passes peer review, initial results show that their method attacks and kills ALL variations of the virus. A fast track through the FDA could have one of the world's leading problems licked in less than a decade."
There is a history of announcing big breakthroughs in science here in Utah by going to the press before appropriate peer review has taken place (Cold Fusion anyone?). Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this come through, but until it passes the peer review test, as a scientist, I will withhold my enthusiasm.
In fact, any time I hear something potentially huge being hyped in the mainstream press before I hear about it in scientific journals, my eyebrows tend to rise a bit and I tend to be perhaps even more skeptical.
"We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
Uh...... yeah. That is why I am reading about it in the Salt Lake Tribune before hearing about it in Science or Nature?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Although the scientist doing this work stated, "we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype" and the "few AIDS research luminaries" mentioned in the article are not willing to comment this early, it looks like there may already be some interest in Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals' OTC stock which closed at 3.67--up a healthy 122.42% today.
Insert generic comment about the overuse of a drug leading to the evolution of the disease to a new super form that is resistant to all known treatments.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
This substance is a mimic of a current human body chemical, and attacks one hell of a lot more than just HIV- my guess is it will end one of two ways. It will either strip the body of everything including our normal colonies of beneficial bacteria and yeasts, and thus be too dangerous to use. Or it won't work for some mutation, and we'll still have a million or so HIV patients after it's in widespread use.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
but the AIDS virus was a god sent plague upon the morale-less soul sucking evil anti christian gays... surely the doctors who are pursuing these so called aids cures are performing work of the devil and funding should be withdrawn immediately.
+5 sarcasm
(+5 funny? +5 sad? +5 satire, cause you know there are people out there that really think that way, freaks)
As nice as it is to think that we have an AIDS cure, and that we don't have to worry about it anymore. But I think that rushing it through a FDA approval, without exploring its full consequences could be a little dangerous. If this drug was passed, and everybody who took it got rid of their AIDS, but developed some other condition which killed them in a year, then we'd all look a little stupid, and the drug company would probably be under a lot of scrutiny.
Another thing though, is this drug patented, or will this be cheaply available for everyone who needs it, especially AIDS ravaged countried in Africa.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
let the fucking begin!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
The day there is an available cure for AIDS, there will be fucking in the streets.
Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system.
While the tests are repeatable, there's a long distance between the test tube and human trials.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
This is being promoted by Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals, inc.. Here is the press release behind this article - Novel Drug Compound Kills Multiple HIV Strains.
"Ceragenix has licensed the exclusive worldwide rights to a patented new class of small molecule compounds from its developer, Professor Paul B. Savage at Brigham Young University."
IF the claims are reproducible, this is a major medical breakthrough and will place Prof. Savage among such immortals as Jonas Salk. However, I'll wait for the independent verification before getting excited though.
smaaaaaaallllpox
(biowarfare labs don't count)
These two headlines would occure together:
"HIV/AIDS Extinct After W.H.O. Global Campaign!"
"World Population Skyrockets to 9 Billion in Unprecidented Babyboom!"
Demented But Determined.
See if it will cure you of being an asshole
Forgive me for saying this, but how much of this is trumped up by the scientist vs. the journalist? The researchers stated "we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype", yet the journalist went on and hyped it up.
The headline could've easily read:
"Professor makes steps in war against HIV/AIDS"
"New lead in fight against HIV/AIDS"
Or something along those lines.
I'm actually a BYU student and I'd love to see a terrible disease like HIV/AIDS destroyed as much as the next man - I've met many people suffering from this disease in Latin America and it's horrible to see. I just think the journalist decided to soup up the story by taking what are very preliminary results and making a huge deal of them.
Then again, I do have my fingers crossed...
I'm no med student but the article states that: Ok, if this is true, then we've overcome the large part of AIDS (immunodeficiency). We can just boost the hell out of the white blood cell mimicking Ceragenins. Will this stop AIDS? Maybe not, but it will provide the defenses that AIDS rips from its patients. If I recall correctly, it's not the AIDS virus itself that kills a victim but instead another desease/sickness that occurs from a weakened immune system.
What's exciting is that the AIDS virus probably doesn't infect/reproduce when it is being killed by Ceragenins like it does to white blood cells. Thus, they may have something here if their premises hold true.
Googling for "Ceragenins" results in zero hits. Which means this is some magical elixir that is a mistakened cure all. Or perhaps it's something very obscure that no one has thought of until today? We shall see.
My work here is dung.
Repost this after they've shown some actual data, gotten it published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal, and had independent investigators replicate it. There isn't a single hit for this "family" of compounds on PubMed, and the compound is named after a frikkin biotech company, so color me extremely skeptical - of both data and motives.
This is why normal people get fed up with science. Their exposure to science is through media stories, PR bullshit like this, which says "Huzzah! Cure for X found!" Later on, we find out that the data is too weak to pass peer-review, that the new compound is toxic, that it only weakly suppresses X in animal models, and that X is not yet, in fact, cured. The real scientists around the world keep at their benchwork, with barely a glance up, steadily and (to the public) inconspicuously advancing our fundamantal understanding of X. But five years later, Mr. Normal Person hears another story like this one and says to himself "Didn't they cure X years ago? What are those ivory-tower leeches spending my $30 billion a year on, anyway?"
Heh, you refuse to comment on this until further results are publsihed... except for this. Soo... starting...
NOW!
"This is considered plagiarism."
Free love it is.
I dunno. So the compound destroys HIV in the test tube. AFAIK, this is underwhelming, because the problem with HIV is that it hides out inside cells where blood-borne drugs can't get to it. (I don't even think it's in there as a complete viral particle, probably just the RNA.)
You could hope that if you kept your bloodstream flooded with the drug you could nail each new virus as it emerged, but I seem to recall HIV can go directly from cell to cell, without entering the bloodstream at all.
I think our natural immune system kills off viral infections in substantial part by recognizing which of our cells are infected and killing them. That is, it's not just a question of wiping out the free virus, I think.
for the playstation 4. I mean THIS time it will sport a processor so powerful it will cure all ailments, get you laid AND have great games. Go Sony! Or maybe install a rootkit in your DNA and sue AIDS for DRM infringement?
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
The reason is that HIV integrates itself into the victim's DNA and hides there, pretty much forever. Short of rebuilding the victim molecule-by-molecule, you can never get rid of HIV. The best you can hope for is to put the virus into remission, and hope people take their pills faithfully enough to prevent a shadow epidemic from forming.
And even if the drug works and is nontoxic, there is another big hurdle: the blood-brain barrier. The brain is extremely picky about which chemicals it lets in, and a lot of drugs just don't make the cut. Unfortunately, HIV is perfectly happy to grow in the brain, where it gradually kills off nerve cells. IIRC the existing anti-HIV drugs have this problem; AIDS-related dementia is a feared complication.
I agree. I'm really, really tired of hearing about stuff like that - stuff that has basically no chance of ever developing into anything meaningful. And this goes for the technology stuff, not just the science. Even more tired than I am of seeing dupes. Call me back when someone has developed a treatment for AIDs that has actually been tested on humans and works.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Though I wanted to, I will not reply to your comment.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
The beatings will continue until morale (and spelling) improves!
I'd prefer to just mod this "flamebait" but instead, I'll point out that the "Mormon" church donates millions each year to needy people including 3rd world countries. But hey, you keep smokin' whatever it is that lets you ignore reality in favor of your prejudices.
From TFA
emphasis mine. Yeah, in general bacteria and viruses are quite different, in this case it's not a totally off-base speculation.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Many a slashdotter can now get laid!
I don't think the fear of contracting an STD was preventing that
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
So just the fact that they've found something that kills AIDS is not particularly interesting.
What's required is to also do tests on cells, then animals, then humans. If they don't immediately keel over, then we can get a tad excited. Until then, it's about as promising a treatment as red fuming nitric acid (a real good AIDS zapper).
This reminds me of something my biology teacher told me in high school:
HIV is very easy to kill. Anyone with a bottle of Clorox has a powerful tool for killing all variants of HIV.
The hard part is killing it without killing or damaging other tissues.
Oddly enough, despite what may seem like a breakthrough in HIV research, the word "Ceragenin" brings up ZERO hits in Google. If this was really hot or big, you think it should bring up lots of hits.
Unless HIV works differently from other viruses, it does eventually kill the infected cell it used to replicate itself.
Why? Because virus replication dumps all the copies *inside* the cell walls. Eventually, the cell gets as full as it can be and pops - releasing all the newly-formed copies. The cell at that point is damaged beyond recovery and dies.
There is nothing to reverse once the infected cells have cycled. The real problem is getting *all* copies of the virus, since it can hide dormant in other types of tissue.
*I am not a doctor, but I play one on dates.*
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Urbanization and developed economies do a really good job of lowering birthrates. It's happened in the United States, Europe, Japan and is starting to happen in India. China's is dropping too, but that is more of a side effect because of government planning.
Ok, so I missed that word. I did RTFA but I'm still skeptical.
Viruses and bacteria are so different to me, rarely a treatment affects both.
CSA, in fact, stands for Cationic Steroid Antimicrobial and almost every piece of research involving them is centered on attacking bacteria.
How come zero hits turn up for Ceragenins when I search for it?
This article didn't include much of the above information and seemed to give a completely different name for CSAs than what they truly are--compound steroids used to primarily combat bacteria.
My work here is dung.
Yes, I'm sure if it was in the hands of Pfizer they would just give it away for free.
We are all just people.
...but that doesn't stop it (or radiation, rather) from being the most powerful tool we have in fighting cancer.
It doesn't matter if the AIDS drug is harmful. Like the radiation therapy that we treat cancer with, it just has to be less harmful than the disease it treats.
And existing HIV drugs are already pretty harmful, even though they just contain rather than cure the disease. They're used anyway, because despite the negative effects they're vastly preferable to an uncontained case of AIDS.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
HIV is an enveloped virus, not a naked one. This means that all of the progeny virus particles bud out through the cell membrane, taking a portion of it with them. There isn't the lysis associated with a naked virus, and the cell doesn't simply explode. Infected cells are instead killed off by other, non-infected immune cells which recognize the foreign proteins (from HIV) that are being expressed on the surface of the infected cells.
For a while the body can produce new T-cells as quickly as they can be infected and killed off. Eventually, however, production slows, the T-cell count drops, and full-blown AIDS begins.
Anyway, even if this hypothetical treatment does work, another virus will come out of the woodwork. It's happened pretty much every time we've made any significant progress - why should we expect it to not happen again?
CSA stands for cationic steroid antibiotics and there is a company, Ceragenix, that works on them. Perhaps that's what prompted this made up word?
-Ryan C.
I would like to point out 1) that it's not just BYU working on this. The person whose results are actually cited in the study is actually Dr. Derya Unutmaz, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. 2) it's being supported by Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is based in Denver. It's probably a long shot, and the company knows it. But it's real research the way it's normally done in this field. 3) it's not the professors hyping the results so much as it is the journalists. As usual. All those saying there's a long way to go are right, and the researchers who did the work would whole-heartedly agree. 4) BYU has and continues to produce research that is published in peer reviewed journals. Just because part of it was done at BYU doesn't make it wrong; BYU has done many things that are actually right. Saying or implying anything different is simply religious bigotry. 5) Oh, and many of you would be surprised to visit the Biology department at BYU. They believe in evolution there. When I went home for Christmas my sister bad-mouthed creationism because, after taking botany at BYU, she knew they didn't have a leg to stand on. (Stories about individual Mormons, even prominent ones, who might have disagreed will be promptly ignored. I probably have seen, heard, and read more of it than you have.)
The truth is, drug patents are the best case to be made in favor of patents. The only problem is that even that example provides a weak case.
Thank God I'm not the only one. My own wake-up call happened when I stumbled on Peter Duesberg's paper The Chemical Bases of the Various AIDS Epidemics: Recreational Drugs, Anti-viral Chemotherapy and Malnutrition. (pdf). In other words, destruction of the body's immune system is reasonably caused by:
* Pounding the body with massive doses of intoxicants, most notably nitrite poppers (anyone up for gay anal sex?)
* Highly toxic anti-viral medication, such as AZT, which is sure to cause death if ingested.
* Malnutrition, or the shutting down of the body's systems though sheer neglect, mostly seen in Africa.
In other words, when you consider that statistically, all early AIDS patients were gay, most of them used "batteries of recreational drugs" before sex, all were told they were going to die, all were given toxic AZT, all died, and that poor Africans have nothing to do with this, then you can neatly explain the AIDS "epidemic" in you armchair without even hitting reload.
Problem is, AZT and other retrovirals cost $25,000 per year, and if you explain away the AIDS epidemic, then you destroy everyone's profit and research incentives. Meanwhile, the gay community is complicit in this deception, because no gay man wants to admit that he is a drug addict or gave the disease to himself.
Remember Richard Nixon's "War on Cancer?" This was a viral research program that concluded in the late 1970's with nothing to show for its efforts. Except that a few years later, along came HIV and a massive new round of research funding. Convenient?
As the OP says, debunking HIV/AIDS takes a lot of reading. But that's also kind of the point: the evidence against HIV is so massive that even paraphrasing it would leave you breathless.
Not to be nit-picking or anything, but technically a virus is not alive, therefore you can not kill it.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
I think I'll go surfing on dubious websites for a few hours without a virus scanner or a firewall, because I don't really believe that computer viruses exist. You can't prove that I infected other users from my address book. It could be something totally random that caused their hard drive bits to flip. This whole computer virus thing is just a conspiracy designed to sell useless software and spread fear.
In two years, I will graduate from medical school and treat, without predjudice, patients who might believe as you do. If you should become infected with HIV and acquire AIDS, but refuse treatment, I'll wish you well. But if you should have a change of heart, then I will use my conspiracy-driven science to help you to the best of my ability.
More precisely, we want to establish a system whereby people will put the effort and money into the research and development in the first place. This doesn't necessarily have to be exclusive control, but you want the thought to be in people's heads that there is good money to be made in developing a cure for AIDS. Exclusive control (a.k.a "intellectual property") is probably the easiest way to do this (from an administrative/policy perspective) but it is certainly not the only way.
Sometimes, exclusive control turns out to have a significantly negative impact (cf. software patents, and this discussion). Other times, it turns out to be beneficial. You really have to look at the particulars of the situation to determine what's "right" in any given case.
http://outcampaign.org/
Most of the herpes family of viruses tends to retreat to the spinal cord where the immune system can't get at it to finish it off. Hence, when you get an outbreak of herpes zoster (chicken pox/shingles) - it travels along nerve clusters and surfaces on the skin in very distinct patterns deliniating the specific area that's covered by a given nerve.
For everyone who had chicken pox as a child, and is dreading an occurrance of shingles later in life (my wife was struck by this after a cortisone shot in her back supressed her immune response enough to give the virus a shot at an attack), this potential treatment is very good news indeed.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Actually, based on your views and the beliefs of the Mormon church, it would make more sense for them to distribute it as freely as possible. If they were short-sighted and just wanted to make a quick buck, sure they could sell it for as much as they can, however, I'd have to give such a quickly growing faith a little more credit than that. If the Mormon church were to become known as the religion that cured AIDS, that would likely bring untold amounts of people into their fold, boosting donations and creating more revenue in the long run. Of course, I don't believe that that would be their primary motivation. A large part of the Mormon faith is the whole "be fruitful and multiply" thing, and from the way I understand it, this is because they believe that unborn souls need to be brought to the earth before Armageddon or whatever. So, if they were to eliminate AIDS, this would eliminate a large obstacle for their faith. Then again, this is just speculating on yet another wonder drug that'll probably amount to little more than snake oil. And if my views on the Mormon church are wrong, it's because I'm not Mormon, but I am one of thirty-two (first) cousins, and I've received a handful of well-intentioned preachings over the years that have possibly mutated. But I think I'm probably close enough.
I am afraid I agree that we will see no cure in this lifetime. Whether or not cures will be discovered is another matter. Curing HIV/AIDS would create both religious and economic uproar -- and would be therefore highly political. My arguments are as follows:
1. Religious: Many Christians (Mormons very much included) are of the opinion that HIV/AIDS is "God's punishment" for fornication, and the preach that HIV/AIDS is God's incentive to abstain from sex. Although this is a flawed argument, especially in regard to people who contract HIV/AIDS through non-sexual activity (haemophilacs, newborn children, blood transfusees, etc.), it carries a lot of weight within the Christian community. I find it distressing that this discovery occurred at BYU, due to the religious considerations surrounding HIV/AIDS.
2. Economic: Every pharmaceutical manufacturer that has an AIDS drug makes money hand-over-fist by selling it. It is more financially viable to "treat" an illness, because "curing" an illness is tantamount to killing the Golden Goose. For example: haemophilacs are considered a target market for drug companies who make clotting factor because haemophilia is a genetic disease and therefore incurable. A severe haemophiliac cannot survive without factor, and drug companies know this. It is common for a family with a child who develops haemophilia to go into bankruptcy over the costs of financing treatment for their disease. Further, the drug companies keep secret the cost to manufacture a single unit of factor-- largely because to make it public would open them to suits over "price gouging". HIV/AIDS patients are no different. It is a chronic, incurable disease that takes a lot of high-priced medicine every day to keep it manageable. An HIV/AIDS cure would close this lucrative market and therefore curtail profits. Due to this fact, I doubt seriously whether we will even know if this new discovery turns out to be a cure, because any peer review be performed at least in part by Big Pharma -- and we already know from experience what altruistic folks they are. I predict this will be like the discovery of any other possible HIV/AIDS cure: it will sound great, it will have a lot of promise, then it will be "discovered" to be yet another red herring.
3. Politics. When the religious and pharmaceutical lobbies get involved, one can be sure there will be little or no government involvement with peer review of a cure. Any tests from public institutions that dispute those from the pharmaceutical industry will be subject to debate and perhaps even lawsuits. Because Big Pharma and the religious lobby wields such tremendous power, it is inevitable that any funding to a public insitution researching potential cures will be cut. One need only look at the fight over nicotine research and tobacco-related diseases. Big Tobacco fought with public institutions for decades and by dint of keen lobbying --essentially graft-- they kept the real results buried.
Sorry to be such a joykill...
Mekkis, The Eyeconoclast
The article is just an investor communication, published on the Ceragenix website under Investor Relations. Such communications are not the same as scientific journal publications, they just tell the investor where his money is going, usually down the drain. Example :-
PR guy on phone to head scientist : "I've got a hundred shareholders wanting to know why they aren't billionaires yet... do we have any discoveries yet, any liquids that turn green and smoke when you add the blue powder ?".
Head scientist : "Uh, we have something that may go somewhere in a few years, to do with HIV".
PR guy : "Great ! We'll announce that".
I believe you, but he is the originator of the argument you make (down to the shoes). I took the philosophy course where I cited the argument from, thats how i recognized it. He argues philosophical pragmatism...that is "what works is true" (as opposed to "what is true works...because it is true") He is a fairly radical advocate of animal rights, having written a book aptly titled "Animal Rights" and is an all around anti-individualist (your life may be sacrificed for the betterment of others). I don't know his stance on euthenasia.
On a somewhat related note, I believe that is the sort of philosophy which resulted in much of the tyrrany of the twentieth century. "Your right to (life/liberty/property) is being taken for the beneft of (Insert group of people here)"
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
Well if a city can take someones home to get higher taxes, what is to stop it from being taken and given away for the greater good? In fact that is one eminent domain seizure I can whole heartedly agree with.
There are a few things to ponder...
First, the article says that, the compound invented by Paul D. Savage of Brigham Young University appears to hunt down and kill HIV.
Now, doing an actual search on Brigham Young's website turns up 0 hits for "Paul D. Savage". It does, however, turn up quite a few hits for just Paul Savage. In fact, it turns up this dude, a "Paul B. Savage". He seems pretty smart (MS Word document link). Plus, he's gotten recognition for research in T-Cells, important information that could really help figure out how to stop T-Cell destruction by the AIDS virus.
I guess either the press release is really trying to piggy-back on some smart dude, and hide their tracks by swapping a middle initial, or the Salt Lake Tribune just can't get their middle initials straight. Maybe this "Ceragenins" is something new and undiscovered as well, just like "Paul D. Savage". They both return zero hits when you try to search for them.
It's hard to get that excited about an "in vitro" ("in glass") result. Lots of things work in vitro. There's no indication of whether this works in animals. When they can show it working in mice with human immune systems (there are genetically engineered mice with human immune systems, used for this kind of research), they'll have something. This is a long way from an "AIDS cure".
The reason nobody can find the term "ceragenins" in Google is that compounds of this class are called "cationic steroid antibiotics" in the literature. "Ceragenins" is a PR term.
This company also claims that these compounds can be used to treat cancer, macular degeneration, and multiple-antibiotic resistant infections. They also can be used for skin cream for dry, itchy skin. There's an proposed antiterrorism application, to make smallpox vaccination safer.
However, there are no claims that these compounds improve gas mileage.
Ticker symbol: CGXP.OB. Up 122% today on this press release.
I think you are attacking the straw-slashdotter. If the science is real and valid I don't care who came up with it. It looks like the very few comments bashing LDS are being modded into oblivion. And dude, don't have a persecution complex. Just because one jackass says something totally stupid doesn't mean the whole of slashdot is out to bash your faith. Personally, I think all the faiths are basically nonsense. But you can believe whatever you want, its none of my business. All a mormon or an atheist or a satan worshipper needs to do to have their science respect is produce good results that can be reproduced. Beyond that its totally irrelevant. I suspect most actual scientists would agree with me.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
I support allowing private corporations, like Google to fund research and make generic drugs. I think it's better for the markets if the private sector handles it, also humanitarian work is not something governments are good at. Governments are not designed for this job, private corporations are.
Last I looked, the AIDS toll in Africa stood at 30 million, which is more people than live in my entire country -- and more than another 25 million have the disease and know that they're going to die because of it. In Africa alone.
The figures for 'way back in 2000 were 10,000 a day, 4,000 of those from AIDS. Last year, there were over 3 million deaths and nearly 5 million new infections. That would wipe out my entire state in five months, eight through AIDS alone, and AIDS alone would do in the entire country in about eight years.
True, there are those other diseases around -- curable ones too -- but don't underestimate the damage which AIDS does. There are 12 million AIDS orphans alive as I type, for example.
Amongst other things, a common urban myth in Africa is that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS... so you get AIDS-infected men raping girls who are so young that they have to be virgins. Nice.
It's also largely curable by the same education which would reduce AIDS and practically eliminate tuberculosis and malaria. In fact, the basic directives for achieving this are something like 4500 years old. Nevertheless, a magic bullet for AIDS would be a more than welcome assistant. My only real reservations center around what else it kills besides AIDS.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The only absolute thing is that your argument is completely flawed. People can do many bad things without exercising force - they can cheat, steal, sell deadly products, incite hatered etc. Nobody gives them any right (far less absolute) to do these things. Quite the contrary, people have a right to exercise force against those who cannot live in or with a civilized society.
Read about it here.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.