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Researchers Zero In On Protein That Destroys HIV
Julie188 writes with this excerpt from a Loyola University news release:
"Using a $225,000 microscope, researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys. The finding could lead to new TRIM5a-based treatments that would knock out HIV in humans, said senior researcher Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System."
"Hey everybody! We're all gonna get laid!"
Use condoms.
This is exciting but it looks like it has a ways to go before it is a viable treatment for humans.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Sounds like promising research, but I'm confused by why the cost of the microscope is prominently displayed in both the press release and TFS. Is $225,000 considered cheap or expensive for a microscope these days?
I wish they'd tell us the hair colour of the researchers too since it's probably just as relevant to the article.
As a biologist, I have no idea why they're making such a big deal of it being a $225,000 deconvolution microscope. It's cheap compared with what most institutions have. Besides which is the fact that the microscope used isn't interesting. Any high(ish) resolution fluorescent microscope would have given you the same data. The interesting part is this TRIM5a. Let's see what happens with recombinant TRIM5a in animal studies.
And it could kill the human at dose lower than what kill the HIV virus. Wake me up when they are at phase 3 or later.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Ironically, the protein that destroys AIDS isn't folded, it's straight.
rimshot
"Using a big-ass microscope, researchers have..."
No sig today...
A virus is basically a cellular syringe. Break the syringe by destroying the protein shell that contains the RNA - infection stopped as you can't inject into a cell any longer.
Just figure out how to do it without making people lose their hair and fingernails. That's the tough part.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I am not sure what is more sad. That your 1st reaction is to wonder this, or that I think I'm starting to believe that really happens.
Once HIV is curable, people will find out the hard way that they never did come up with a cure for Herpes.
HIV mutates fast. For more discussion of HIV (and a lot of rude comments by an HIV researcher [1]) check out Abbie Smith's blog.
[1] Yes, she's young and (very) good looking. And has a dog that you could saddle for rodeo.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
We're one step closer to the day I can go find the freakiest, dirtiest, most disease-laden slut and hire her to do nasty, nasty things... and simply go for a single shot afterwards.
I'm turning 40, though, so they'd better get on with it. If my emails are to be believed, I have only another thirty or forty years until pills no longer facilitate my erections.
Even if you can kill the HIV virus, you still wouldn't have a cure.
HIV is a retrovirus. It becomes part of the infected cell's genome. Any agent that kills the virus can suppress symptoms/disease but not cure people who are already infected.
P.S. Please take off your tin-foil hat. The glare is quite annoying.
the anti-bacterial resistant gonorrhea
HPV
herpes
Hepatitis C
The last being the worst of them - but if a cure for AIDS is found, i'm sure HVC is right behind it - IIRC, they already use interferon and have a 50/50 success rate to put patients in remission (although the treatment is basically chemotherapy... so makes you feel like poop)
That doesn't happen. If you know the pharmaceutical business, you would understand why that's the least profitable thing they could do, and why it couldn't be done anyways.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I want to nip this in the bud:
It doesn't happen. Learn how the sciences in pharmaceutical companies is done, look at the patent regulation regarding pharmaceutical , and look at the bonus structure for the executives.
Now think about the market.
The first two on my list are far to complex for a /. post, so I will address the money portion.
ABC company figures out a cure for AIDS.
The CEO and board can sit on it and make a few % increase in profit. Then it falls out of patent and someone else rakes it in. Of the next CEO uses it to get a fat bonus.
OR
the can produce it sell it, watch there stocks go through the roof, and the Executive get 10 million plus bonuses. They get more interest in investors, and the scientists get huge amount of prestige. possible the Nobel prize. Which also makes the company look great.
The scientist could probably lead there own research for the rest of their lives.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're right: We should burn down the FDA so that the wise and beneficient pharmaceutical companies can immediately cure all our diseases with their well-tested, totally safe, and 100% effective drugs that are never mis-marketed for the sake of profit.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Are you actually implying that it would be better without the FDA? Think about what the FDA actually lets through (think Fen-phen and the likes)... this is shit that was clearly dangerous but the drug companies just wanted their money, and the FDA still passed it. While their methods are obviously broken to some degree, imagine no FDA. We'd go back to the 1900's where they sell snake oil for all sorts of problems with no organization to even test or approve it... it just gets thrown on the shelves. Which would you rather have?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I'm not a biologist, but in my health class studies I seem to remember that the virus' RNA encoded into the genome of the cell turns the cell into a factory to replicate more virus once it is infected. Eventually, the virus production overwhelms the cell, which bursts, and the virus is released into the greater system to infect more cells. The problem with HIV is it does thise to the white blood cells themselves, which keep them from generating a proper immune response to other diseases (and the HIV virus), which usually are what kill the host. Destroying the virus won't save the cells already infected, but it will keep the virus from infecting more cells by destroying the virus released before it can infect new cells. Not all cells are infected simultaneously, or HIV would be an instantly fatal disease (which it isn't) and suppressive drugs would have no effectiveness (which they generally do, for a time).
So I was wondering, since the article mentions:
"The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health."
Does this mean that a drug company can't put a patent on it? what happens when research funded by public tax-payer money is released?
Please note: I'm not sure where the NIH money comes from other than rumors I've heard that it is a public institution in the US.
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
Plus, What company in their right mind would give up being able to use the marketing campain "Brought to you by the people that _friggen cured AIDS_". The idea that pharmaceutical companies are holding back cures for things is patently ridiculous.
http://notanumber.net/
The RNA from HIV is retro-transcribed into DNA which is integrated into the host cell genome. It can become latent where it does not actively replicate virus. That's why HIV patients can live so long. Something then later triggers the lytic phase where the viral replication resumes, eventually leading to AIDS.
An agent that kills HIV will remove HIV from your system, but the latent virus DNA inside cells remain undetected and cannot be removed.
You read a LOT of Ayn Rand when you were a young, lonely and impressionable teenager, didn't you?
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Yes, but doesn't that mean that the virus won't infect any more cells, as any cells that begin replicating the virus would only produce more virus that would then be killed in the host system on release?
Essentially, cells infected are "lost" or considered lost, but the original production of uninfected white blood cells continues? Or does the HIV virus infect the originating factories?
I admit, my knowledge of biology is rather armchair-level.
(No worries about knowledge level. We're all here to learn, and I'm probably wrong about somethings.)
So, HIV goes latent, so there is effectively no virus. There is nothing for the drug to kill. When HIV goes back into the lytic cycle, you have to have the drug there to kill the virus, but you don't know when HIV goes back to lytic; it can be 2 weeks or 2 decades. You would have to keep the patient on the drug during this whole time or at least keep monitoring the patient and giving them the drug whenever it flares up.
(That's the simplified version. The more complicated version involves HIV never really going latent in the lymphoid organs, slowly infecting more and more CD4 cells, leading to AIDS. It could be that if this drug can get into the lymphoid tissues, you can reduce the viral load inside to make them long-term non-progressors, but that's more complicated.)
Well, the virus has to be in the person's system in some form for it to be spread from one person to another, though... so it doesn't go completely dormant, does it?
I was thinking this was more along the lines of a permanent medication/supplement that the person takes daily (hourly) to kill any free-floating (non-encoded, pre-payload delivery through the cell membrane) virus in the system so it can no longer be spread and the infection wouldn't get worse (eventually be killed off as cells are activated and destroyed), and the possibility for a person who is engaging in risky practices or exposed to a population that is a risk factor to take it pre-emptively. I guess the question is, "What does one consider a 'cure'". At the very least, it seems it may be developed into a method to stop the spread of infection.
Not going to happen because even if you sale cure for aids for $10,000 - you can only make $10,000 per patient, once, and the number of your customers will decrease with every sale you make, until there are none left... selling relief medicine - you could make tens of thousands dollars a year, and your client base will grow exponentially so long as people keep having sex. It's just plain business sense why cures for many diseases have not been discovered.
Bow before me, for I am root.
That depends on what you call a "cure". You probably carry hundreds of nearly dormant viruses around that your body can never get rid of. Yet, you wouldn't consider yourself "ill".
If they can introduce TRIM5a into human cells and get it expressed, people would end up not needing drugs, not being infectious, and not having any symptoms. That's about as "cured" as you are of many other viral diseases.
#463
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Thank you for proving the validity of my supposition.
Now run along and 'go Galt' or whatever it is you Randroids do when you get cranky.
There's a good little Objectivist.
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wouldn't make a difference, the FDA have been in bed with big pharma for many many years.
In a lot of countries these medicines are "sponsored" by the government ; maybe it should be the governments job to keep those costs low and stop supporting stupid patents costing human lives on daily base ...
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