Slashdot Mirror
Gene Transfer Immunizes Against Monkey HIV Analog
Al writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have immunized monkeys against the simian immunodeficiency virus, the animal model that is closest to HIV. They did so by shuttling a gene into the monkeys' muscles, making the muscle cells produce antibody-like molecules that work against SIV. With both SIV and HIV, the chameleon-like mutability of the virus's surface changes so quickly that most antibodies made by the immune system are soon rendered ineffective. Philip Johnson and colleagues designed DNA sequences for two antibodies known to be effective against SIV. They used antibody-like molecules, called immunoadhesins, in which the functional part of an antibody is fused with a more stable section of another antibody. The same approach could be used to deliver antibodies that are effective against HIV, but which the body doesn't normally produce."
...for all the HIV-analogous-positive monkeys.
THL phish sticks
It would seem to me like this would maybe work for a year or so, and then there'd be some new strain that these antibodies might not hit.
I spent many years in medical school doing research work on viruses, including work with SIV. This article is very optimistic in some of its summaries. HIV and SIV are qualitatively different in the extent of "hypervariability" in their surface proteins. It is generally accepted to be "easier" to create antibodies to SIV, which has been done for many years.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7865316?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed
The technique described is very interesting, don't get me wrong, and I hope it works. However, there are *already* many techniques that appear to immunize against this HIV analog, which do not work for human HIV. The two are significantly different.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
Does the direct injection of large sums of money also work for simians?
there is already a 100% effective immunization against HIV.
...all of my hard work preparing for the zombie invasion will soon pay off.
Why not inject the antibody directly ? Why do we need the body to produce it naturally ? If production is the concern, why not inject the gene in bacterias and have then produce the antibody.
There's probably a good reason but I don't know it.
I'm kind of seeing this technique as an end-run around the "decoy" problem. It's been well known for some time that, at least in the general population, the antibody response against HIV tends to get targeted towards features which are non-protective or hyper-mutable.
However, over time we've come to discover a very small number of patients who have unusual resistance to progression. Some of these possess receptor mutations, some have unusual HLA types, while others were merely infected with what appeared to be somewhat milder variants of the virus.
However, in a few rare cases, we discovered patients with antibodies that were unusually effective at dealing with HIV's evasions. Often these antibodies had "weird" features -- things like floppy sections of their variable regions that allowed them to reach down to contact hidden epitopes, and other rare features. While they offered hope that an effective antibody response was not impossible, at the same time there really much chance of designing an antigen in such a way to get the general population to produce these unusual variants.
So, what this work has apparently done, is skip the entire vaccination step. Clone out the sequence for those particularly effective antibody variants, get your target organism to express them directly. However HIV may adapt to the new antibodies, as long as you can find one single person, somewhere in the world with an effective antibody response, it can be duplicated elsewhere.
In just a few years we'll be forced to upgrade to Monkey HIV Digital, which will make Monkey HIV Analog look like crap anyway.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I think the virus will always mutate
... with a hat on.
Is it safe again to screw the monkeys or not?!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
A gene therapy in humans that reawakens a gene we lost. The kicker? A kind of antibiotic cream can reawaken it without gene therapy!
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
So this protects Steve Ballmer and his family but what about the rest of us? *ducks chair* INCOMING!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
According to South Park, Magic Johnson has already found the cure to HIV & AIDS with large doses of injected cash into the body...lol.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Antibodies against HIV are extremely hard to get right. For example, Dan Barouch has kept a group of vaccinated monkeys with an SIV/HIV hybrid alive for years... except for one whose virus mutated in just the wrong way. Based on the limited information in the article, it seems like the U Penn study works similarly.
Because people should just stop touching the monkeys. They've got problems enough as it is!
We already have diseases like Scarlet Fever that cause the body to attack itself. In the case of Scarlet Fever, a strep infection (like strep throat) causes the body to attack the the valves in the heart because the protien in the valves is similar to the one on the bacteria.
Now you want to start bonding things to stuff and seeing what you can get it to attack... Why am I seeing cancer, kidney, and liver problems in the futures of patients treated with this stuff??
HDGary secures my bank
Wait, we were supposed to stop?
I was hoping it was this Phillip Johnson. That would have been a real twist.
That would be 'analogue' not 'analog'.
Editing, +1
-Styopa
Indeed, sadly enough. Last time just 2 months ago, on his way to Africa precisely...
We might be one step closer to a vaccine, great news. In the meantime, someone please tell the Pope that condoms do save lives?
I wonder where they get those extra genes from to transfer? (I didn't RTFA.) I hope not it's frogs - we know how well that worked out for John Hammond. Wait, there's something about a chameleon (I don't RTFS either, sorry). And we know that Suse belongs to Novel, who's in bed with MS (sounds like a soapie yet?), who are against viral licensing. So this is how it works!
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Abstinence and monogamy have a 100% success rate.
Find me people who are 100% abstinent and monogamous, and then we'll see how many of them there are as a proportion of the general population. As an exercise for the interested reader, we can then work out the probability of any two of them of opposite genders meeting and falling in love to form a life-long monogamous relationship.
That should be both interesting and enlightening.
Or perhaps that relationship should be based upon social pressure (law, religion, custom) rather than love?
Stick Men
Because if it works on HIV too, you will see this disappear in the drawers of big medical companies, because it actually heals people instead of keeping them on an expensive lifelong dependence/addiction.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.