New Drug Could Cure Nearly Any Viral Infection

HardYakka writes "A team of researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory have designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection. The researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever."

Comments

It's called Kalocin.

[dtmos]

1969 called. They want their drug back.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brought to you by Phicorp just in time for Miracle Day.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[webmistressrachel]

Wow, if that's true, we have to think long and hard about why it's been suppressed (if it has). Maybe it's not the wonder drug it could have been, and was abandoned for lack of effectiveness.

Either that, or we're right about Big Pharm. A drug like this doesn't seem to be in their interests at all.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[immakiku]

Did you even read that? That's wiki's list of fictional medicines.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[webmistressrachel]

Yes, yes, on this occasion I admit it, it did. I didn't even read the linked Wiki, I just assumed he was being truthful. It's a serious subject, I tend to take discussions on serious subject too seriously. Thanks for letting me know, I missed out a good joke.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[MBCook]

That would actually be my worry. Enough people already take drugs when they have the slight discomfort or to cure their flu (despite anti-bacterials having no effect on the flu). What's going to happen when they can take a drug for all that stuff? At the rate we use drugs, it seems like this one would be burned out and ineffective pretty fast unless the government really restricts it (more the Cipro or other other drugs that are left).

The idea of bugs that become resistant to all this stuff, or a drug that people can't stop taking because of horrible side effects... that sounds like great news. Can we please be careful not to invent/breed ourselves into a pseduo-Descolada?

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[webmistressrachel]

Well played, good sir. I missed that completely and posted a stupid naive response, accompanied by a loud woosh sound as it went over my head...

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[cayenne8]

The hell with all of this.

Just come up with a cure for AIDS...so we can all get laid again without worrying or feeling guilty about screwing without a fuckin' rubber.....

Geez, the day they cure AIDS, I'm predicting the divorce rate will skyrocket with a ton of guys going "Later Bitch"....and not having to worry about dying if they get laid by someone different.

Oh well....sure would be nice to go back to the days before AID's..when you really didn't worry as long as she was on the pill, and anything you caught for the most part...could be cured with a quick shot.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[MBCook]

That doesn't mean that there can't be bad reprocussions to over-use of a real drug that can cure a large number of illnesses, assuming the drug works out in trials. How useful is Penicillin these days? How much worse is MRSA compared to the weaker infections that people used to get? Fiction could end up being sadly prophetic, if we're not careful.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[spazdor]

Wow, did this post ever reveal a lot about you.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Aryden]

Cause pregnancy, and other non-viral issues aren't ever a problem....

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[immakiku]

What does this have to do with what I wrote? I'm pointing out that the parent to my post is assuming something based on his faulty understanding of history. Yes fiction strangely predicts reality in certain cases, but that's a different topic altogether.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[HungryHobo]

How useful is Penicillin these days?

still fairly useful.Not as useful as it used to be but still good.

How much worse is MRSA compared to the weaker infections that people used to get?

no worse. it's just that we've become so accustomed to antibiotics working insanely well that when a handful of bugs become resistant they seem far scarier than their ancestors despite being no more deadly.

It's hard to comprehend how deadly bacterial infections were before Penicillin. Getting just a taste of it in the form of MRSA only seems scarier relative to how thing have been since penicillin.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[idontgno]

Damn. I was hoping I could get some of those sweet, sweet mentats.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[cayenne8]

Cause pregnancy, and other non-viral issues aren't ever a problem....

You must have missed the part where she was on the pill.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[cayenne8]

Wow, did this post ever reveal a lot about you.

You say that like it is a bad thing?

:)

Just saying...feel sorry for the kids today..back in my day, you could fuck anything that moves, and the worst thing you worried about was getting her pregnant....but most of them were on the pill, so that wasn't as big a worry. And if you caught the clap or something, all you needed was a shot. You also didn't feel forced to be so monogamous for health reasons.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[HungryHobo]

the thing is that looking into the way that it works: it's hard to see any straightforward way for most of these viruses to evolve a resistance.

It targets dsRNA which is very central to their life cycle.

it's the difference between an animal evolving a resistance to a poison and evolving a resistance to having it's internal organs ripped out.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[SecurityTheatre]

MRSA is exactly as dangerous as Staphylococcus was before the invention of antibiotics.

It's simply resistant, so we don't have the "auto-win" of antibiotics.

Penicillin was (and still is) a wonderful thing for humanity.

Probably the greatest discovery in history... up there with fire, farming, electricity, etc.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[tibit]

I don't know how often it happens to others, but I was always getting some nasty bacterial infection after a prolonged viral cold. I'd, say, get bacterial bronchitis that'd last sometimes for a month or two. Luckily, this "phenomenon" waned over the last decade, and these days I don't use antibiotics. Yay!

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[interkin3tic]

That doesn't mean that there can't be bad reprocussions to over-use of a real drug that can cure a large number of illnesses, assuming the drug works out in trials. How useful is Penicillin these days?

I seem to recall hearing that part of the problem of antibiotic resistance was when antibiotics aren't used to completion. Treating until the symptoms were largely gone, but not all the infectious agent would give that remainder a good shot at developing resistance genes and proliferating, instead of being killed off completely.

Also we hopefully won't be as cavalier about deploying these antivirals as we were when antibiotics were first discovered and we hadn't already encountered resistance. We probably could have figured it out then I suppose. Horizontal gene transfer with viruses is also different from bacterium. Bacterium can easily share plasmids that confer resistance to antibiotics, so they can share the knowledge with other bacterium. I think there's some possible gene swapping when in a host cell, but being dormant outside a host cell, a virus is going to have less chances to pass resistance genes around.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[budgenator]

The thing about viruses is they have no metabolism, they are totally dependent on the host cells to reproduce and my concept of alive and dead simply doesn't apply to them. This antiviral actually does nothing to the virus, it kills the host cells which are reproducing the virus; if the virus is like a computer virus, then the anti-viral is like pulling the power cord on the computer.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[blueg3]

How bad is MRSA compared to people dying of infection from even relatively minor injuries? Not bad at all.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[budgenator]

It could be not only the cure for aids, but HVB, HVC, all of the HPC's and both herpes as well.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[JordanL]

I think you startled people, as many other people see such an intense preoccupation with sexual gratification as the sign of a narrow, uneducated, or "instinctual" mind. Or, I guess, psychologically many people attach the, er, position you are holding as being statistically indicative of personality types they do not like.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[budgenator]

The drug "kills" the virus, by killing the infected host cells, I expect the side-effects is going to feel as bad as have a full-blown case of the flu, or being on chemo; few people are going to take this frivolously twice.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[v1]

the thing is that looking into the way that it works: it's hard to see any straightforward way for most of these viruses to evolve a resistance.

It targets dsRNA which is very central to their life cycle.

Read up on Penicillin for comparison. It was considered a "wonder drug" for the time because it had the same idea, attack a critical mechanism used only by bacteria:

antibiotics work by inhibiting the formation of peptidoglycan cross-links in the bacterial cell wall.

Then penicillin went into massive-scale use all over the world. It took a number of years, but now we have a whole bunch of resistant bacteria. The reason it's hard to find an effective poison on roaches is because of how short their life cycle is, combined with the use of sexual reproduction. (an unusual combination in life) Now look at bacteria and viruses, that clone themselves. They have a life cycle not measured in months or weeks, but in minutes. It totally changes the game.

It really wouldn't matter if so many genes were randomly tweaked every generation that 90% of the "offspring" were unviable. It could still spread effectively. So mutation is the card they play, heavily. And this makes them very good at rapid adaptation to drugs. They'll find a way to block the drug. Or make the drug ineffective. Or metabolize the drug. Or find a totally different approach to the problem the drug creates. All through random trial-and-error. If I give you six dice and tell you I win as long as you don't roll six 1's, if you roll enough, eventually you'll win. And you only need to win once. Then that technique, being the only survivor, is free to multiply without limit. And you get to roll the dice a million times. It's easy math.

The current method to prevent this adaption is giving "cocktails" of several different kinds of drugs, that have different ways of killing viruses/bacteria. The idea being that a single bacteria in the presence of say, three different drugs, will have to randomly mutate a resistance to all three, on the same roll of the dice. The odds of this are a great deal lower, and help offset the short life cycle advantage. But lets face it, eventually it will happen, and when it does, if we don't find a way to eradicate it immediately, we're screwed, because now we have a bug in the wild that we have no way to kill.

So, there is no "magic potion" that does kill and will kill all bacteria or virius. And there never will be. Best we can do is try to stay a step (or two, if we're very lucky) ahead of them. Or at least not fall too far behind. (like we did for awhile with AIDS)

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[immakiku]

Uh... that's not how it works. Just because you get a cut doesn't mean you'll get an infection nowadays. Granted, that assertion comes as a result of other pieces of modern society like clean water and soap to wash away a wound, but penicillin itself is not directly responsible for the quality of life we enjoy. Most in the US for example don't ever critically need to use penicillin for much of their lives.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[AK Marc]

But Viruses must change the host cell. They do so to procreate. If they didn't, they would die. Once the virus enters a cell, that cell is going to die. The only difference is whether the cell can be killed quickly before replication, or whether it dies because it made so many virus copies it exploded. This drug apparently attacks cells infected, so the cell is much more likely to die before it has replicated massive numbers of the viruses. That isn't an attack on the virus. That's an attack on the host. So the virus will have little mechanism to evolve out of that, hopefully extending the time this treatment is effective such that global application of this drug (even among the "healthy" who could be carriers or incubating something) could wipe out nearly all viral infections. Every June, everyone in the planet takes 4 weeks of anti-virals, and 10 years later, there are no human-only strains of viruses (the only ones left being ones that can be transferred cross-species, in which case we can address it in the host species via drugs or genocide and cure humans of all viruses. Can we even imagine a world with no viruses?

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[phoenix321]

I don't know where and when the "it feels good, so it must be bad" meme entered the Western hive mind. Have we come to a point where a harmless, but very satisfying activity is frowned upon because of it's harmlessness? Have we come to a point, where every action, every pleasure, every thought must have some rational meaning or be an indispensable element of some great planet-saving master plan?

There's almost no product, no advertisement, no activity, no pleasure, no part of life that is not overloaded with pro- or anti-guilt messages about saving or destroying the entire planet. Everything we do is increasingly put into a worldwide context of a global ecological theory of everything. When the prospect of harmless but gratifying sexual relations to return after AIDS is cured, I find this very unsettling, to say the least, to call this "uneducated". Can't educated and smart people, too, just like everyone else, have some fun even if that's not related to saving the planet this time, please?

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[vajrabum]

I wouldn't start planning that spree just yet, I understand that we also have drug resistant gonorrhea to worry about.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[ldobehardcore]

This explanation of the mechanism of DRACOs work sounds to me very similar to how the normal immune system works.
Human NK cells look for antigens that are produced by infected cells, when they encounter the antigens, they release Apoptosis signals to the infected cell and move along to the next cell.
In this case the antigen are dsRNAs that can be found by the DRACO.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[phoenix321]

Vaccines exist for HVA, HVB, some HPC.
Both herpes are rather harmless.
Vaccines are in clinical test phase for HVC.
Syphilis is curable.

Among STDs, there's only one 400kg Gorilla left. If they cure that, it's probably time for a 60s revival.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[JordanL]

I think it has more to do with the fact that many humans, "Western" or "Eastern", have trouble partaking in this pleasure *indiscriminately* and at the same time retaining a psychological understanding of the gender source of their satisfaction as being "people" in the sense of self-aware beings that have feelings, emotions, beliefs, understandings, potentials and all those things that make them different to us than our pets.

Or that "free sex" engages different portions of the brains than those that allow us to empathize, and thus many people, at least within themselves, feel the two are exclusionary.

Whether or not this is actually the case hasn't been empirically studied to my knowledge, although the anecdotal evidence would suggest that it's at least partially true.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[adamofgreyskull]

Geez, the day they cure AIDS, I'm predicting the divorce rate will skyrocket with a ton of guys going "Later Bitch"....and not having to worry about dying if they get laid by someone different.

No offence, but you're a fucking idiot. The day they "cure" AIDS, the divorce rate won't sky-rocket. Do you seriously think "fear of dying from AIDS related illnesses" is a major reason why people stay in marriages rather than getting divorces? That's the most retarded thing I've read this week, a week in which I've read several YouTube comments.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[adamofgreyskull]

What if it was a pill you could take regularly, say every morning or evening, as a preventative measure? If you wait until you're symptomatic, surely there's a lot more killing to be done than if it's just got to mop-up the early stages of an infection? Or is that naive layman's interpretation not accurate?

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[GryMor]

Infected cells are already zombies, this just kills the zombies before they manage to produce a bunch of viral material and burst.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[St.Creed]

Before antibiotics, bacterial infections were a leading cause of death. Welcome back, Death. We've missed you.

The stupidity of it all is that MRSA is not necessary and can be prevented. Just stop giving antibiotics like candy to everyone asking for it, and stop showering (literally) the fowl and pigs on farms with antibiotics. Currently in Dutch hospitals most people that bring in MRSA either come from Italy or Spain (where every fool can buy antibiotics for the common cold - drugstores tried to give them to me for a very simple rash that was cured with a bit of zinc salve), or from farmers working with chickens (mostly). They literally get showered in antibiotics to prevent disease, the stables are that crowded. And as a side-effect, it speeds up their growth.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Culture20]

So did she maybe.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Culture20]

It's almost like Halo: Osmosis Jones Edition.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[linhares]

Probably the greatest discovery in history... up there with fire, farming, electricity, etc.

you forgot facebook!!!11!

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[linhares]

Wow, did this post ever reveal a lot about you.

It revealed he is a man. Anything else?

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Guppy]

the thing is that looking into the way that it works: it's hard to see any straightforward way for most of these viruses to evolve a resistance.

It targets dsRNA which is very central to their life cycle.

First question you might then ask is, "if dsRNA is so central to their life cycle, then why haven't organisms evolved to use this as a defense?" Answer would be, they do. Anti-dsRNA mechanisms are central to some forms of innate cellular immunity to viruses. In fact, this drug mimics this natural Anti-dsRNA defense.

As such, an infection must evade or disable these natural defenses to successfully replicate. Resistance to DRACO would most likely stem from an adaptation of these existing viral mechanisms to this new challenge.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[RsG]

The stupidity of it all is that MRSA is not necessary and can be prevented.

While I agree with you that overuse of antibiotics for trivial purposes has sped up the development of resistant strains, I think you're overstating it. The tone of your post suggests you blame MRSA entirely on factory farming and physician incompetence/laziness, which simply isn't the case.

To begin with, there are two more or less unavoidable problems that lead to the development of resistant strains. The first is that people prescribed antibiotics for actual bacterial infections often stop taking them when the symptoms abate, rather than taking the full course. The second is that hospitals are breeding grounds for resistant infections. Even a well managed hospital isn't completely safe.

Now, you can reduce those problems with public education and changes to hospital policies, but you can't eliminate the threat, which brings us to the larger issue; resistant strains are inevitable. In a perfect world, where no antibiotics were misused and all hospitals were entirely sterile, there would still arise antibiotic resistant bacteria over time. Basic evolution in action.

So no, MRSA and it's kin cannot be prevented, they can merely be reduced in prevalence.

Now, obviously new treatments can be devised to try and shift our antibacterial measures as the bacteria adapt; in particular if we retire treatments that have become ineffective, the strains resistant to those drugs might die out from competition, allowing us to revive "useless" antibiotics decades or more in the future.

Doing what you suggest - essentially banning antibiotic misuse - is still a good idea, but without the other solutions mentioned above, it's just a delaying tactic.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[damnfuct]

Most in the US for example don't ever critically need to use penicillin for much of their lives.

And the sad thing is how often antibiotics get prescribed for whatever...

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[ceoyoyo]

You're arguing from analogy without really understanding your analogy.

Penicillin interferes with the way many bacteria build cell walls, but there are lots that are naturally resistant to penicillin because they build their cell walls differently. Bacteria also love to swap genes, so eventually that minor cell wall modification got spread around. The fact that penicillin was considered a wonder drug had more to do with it being the first antibiotic discovered. And there wasn't really an "idea" with using penicillin. It's a substance made by a mould that was observed to kill some bacteria. It wasn't designed.

This antiviral appears to attack a pretty critical, and possibly difficult to modify component of many viruses. Plus it causes apoptosis, which for a virus is kind of like a nuclear bomb. Or castration. We routinely castrate cows... do you think they might evolve a resistance?

Bleach is used more widely than penicillin yet there are no bacteria that have evolved a resistance to it.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[voidphoenix]

Two, a new one entered the ring recently.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[HungryHobo]

close but not exactly. Where antigens are normally markers on the cell walls this treatment has the advantage that it actually looks for dsRNA inside every cell: something your own immune system can't do.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[HungryHobo]

who said anything about can't? I said it would be hard.

some things are easy to evolve a resistance to. some things are damned hard and involve the organisms crippling themselves in the process.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Eskarel]

MSRA isn't any nastier than the oldstyle infections it's just difficult to kill with modern medicine. Antibiotic resistent bacteria are going to be a problem in the future if we're not careful with how we use antibiotics, however if we get to the point where antibiotics don't work we'll essentially be back to where we were before they existed. Sure that was pretty awful, but it was where we were before.

Antibiotics have saved more lives than you can count.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[macsuibhne]

We fix that in the civilised world by not requiring people to pay for medicines essential to public health. Sadly, that does not yet include the United States.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Zaphod-AVA]

And shooting the boomer early is a good idea, so you can see the hunters and smokers when they try and grab your teammates.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Kral_Blbec]

And we also expect those who make them to live on rainbows and unicorn farts, right?
Your argument doesn't even work. If you get the prescription, you get the whole antibiotic course at once. Not finishing it has nothing to do with you paying for it. Unless it is a freaking long course of anti-biotics (which is most likely if you already have a resistant strain somehow), then not finishing has everything to do with you deciding not to finish the bottles you already paid for that are in your cupboard. If you didn't pay to begin with, you never took them so the bacteria you carry couldn't become resistant to it anyhow.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Kral_Blbec]

How many free sex societies have prospered in human history? I can't think of any. There have been several that tried, but none that lasted long.
IMO it is because the mindset that puts such high value on instant gratification of any sort is not the type to instill other societal virtues as, patience, self-control, and charity. It is just about me, right now.
Even today you can look at communities where promiscuity is the norm and see the contrast in quality of life compared to a "regular" community.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Kral_Blbec]

Not really. It works by killing the host cell. In an established infection where the majority of the cells present are infected, it would just kill the organ/organism. Much like chemotherapy, there is a fine line between curing a problem and the damage the cure causes.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[skids]

Bleach is used more widely than penicillin yet there are no bacteria that have evolved a resistance to it.

This. The only reason we use antibiotics that bacteria can become immune to is because our bodies can't tolerate the chemicals that kill bacteria in less subtle ways. Partly this is because human cells and bacteria have more in common than they have differences.

If this antiviral is tolerable even in the case of advanced infections, it will be quite the breakthrough both in that we don't have many effective antivirals in the first place, and it appears to be more effective (by analogy) than even antibiotics.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[ceoyoyo]

Fortunately viruses are not at all similar to human cells.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[doccus]

Absolutely.. viruses are, in fact , the biological equivalent of, essentially, evil code.. they neither spin nor toil.. they're a blight. Anyone who doubts a devil might think again after seeing what viruses actually are.. I hope this thing is real as advertised. We can't wipe these things off the face of the earth soon enough, and if it takes a few cells along with it.. so much the better. But excuse any ignorance, but, don't viruses inhabit ALL the cells in a host, meaning.. if it kills the cells, won't it kill the host too?

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Billlagr]

Just out of curiosity...where are these communities of which you speak? Purely out of..ermm..scientific interest...

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[EdIII]

It really wouldn't matter if so many genes were randomly tweaked every generation that 90% of the "offspring" were unviable. It could still spread effectively. So mutation is the card they play, heavily. And this makes them very good at rapid adaptation to drugs. They'll find a way to block the drug. Or make the drug ineffective. Or metabolize the drug. Or find a totally different approach to the problem the drug creates. All through random trial-and-error. If I give you six dice and tell you I win as long as you don't roll six 1's, if you roll enough, eventually you'll win. And you only need to win once. Then that technique, being the only survivor, is free to multiply without limit. And you get to roll the dice a million times. It's easy math.

Imagine every mutation, and generation cost $25. You have $20 million dollars. Odds are not in your favor at finding a cure by pure randomness alone.

What you say is true if the opportunity exists. If this works the way it does, then the smartest thing to do is to take all at the same time. If no opportunity exists for mutation, the odds of them finding a resistance to our cure is much less than you think it is.

Of course, there are animals and birds too, it would be nearly impossible to do all at the same time. Complete extinction is very unlikely. Just pointing out that we will most likely completely eliminate most known viruses that commonly affect us today. New ones could pass and mutate from animals, etc. to affect us too, but nothing in that inherently supports the creation of a super-virus.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Aighearach]

viruses are, in fact , the biological equivalent of, essentially, evil code.. they neither spin nor toil.. they're a blight.
Anyone who doubts a devil might think again after seeing what viruses actually are..

Bacteriophage.
Demonizing them won't make them work any less, thankfully.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck off and die.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[adolf]

It is just about me, right now.

I believe the technical term for free (libre) sex that "is just about me, right now," is called masturbation.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[ldobehardcore]

I Just read through the study on PLoS.
I'm certainly not a geneticist or virologist, or even run of the mill biologist.
My qualifications consist of High school AP Bio, and a LOT of surfing wikipedia, reading bio articles over the last five years or so. (I enjoy reading wikipedia. It's stimulating.)

With that in mind, I think I understand the mechanism of action for DRACO. I don't read too many full fledged bio studies, so I don't know how often results like this happen, but it looks very, very, exciting on the surface.

From the initial results, DRACO looks like a Panacea, and I'm scared of putting my hope in it's development. I'm wary that it may never hit the market due to the horrible US Patent system.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[julesh]

Once the virus enters a cell, that cell is going to die.

Not necessarily, no. Some viruses will insert themselves into the host DNA along with a gene that suppresses production of the virus itself. Cell & its offspring behave normally until some external factor stops the suppression, at which point the whole batch start producing viruses.

This suggests an evolutionary path: viruses that last longer before expressing themselves, thus infecting a larger proportion of the host's cells with their own DNA. At some point, this treatment will be fatal to the patient before it actually kills all the virus-producing cells.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[St.Creed]

You're right that strains are inevitable, but they can be reduced greatly.

Point: in livestock, s. aureus occurs in 47% of the population with around 52% of that population being resistant to more than 3 antibiotics (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus). That does not help.

The Netherlands has a much better trackrecord than surrounding countries like Germany and France, because additional measures are taken after discharge to eradicate the MRSA. In the USA, this would lead to additional cost at no profit to the hospital (patient would not like to pay for it because they aren't sick anymore). Benefit to society does not equate direct profit but does equate to cost for patient. This makes it more difficult to stop MRSA.

While I agree that resistances will always crop up, the *problems* with this resistant bacteria are mostly social in origin. Hence Portugal has a >50% infection rate and The Netherlands less than 1%.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[rgviza]

1982 called. They want their joke back.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[cayenne8]

No offence, but you're a fucking idiot. The day they "cure" AIDS, the divorce rate won't sky-rocket. Do you seriously think "fear of dying from AIDS related illnesses" is a major reason why people stay in marriages rather than getting divorces?

When AIDs hit...it became a HUGE incentive, to get into and stay in a monogamous sexual relationship...generally marriage.

Yes, I do believe that if they found the cure, then guys who were afraid of messing around with more women...would tend less to become married, or would cheat more in marriage (if found out would divorce), and sure...many that could feel they could freely pursue sexual conquests without fear of death...would get out of the stiffling arrangement they were in.

Would there be a stampede to the courts for divorces...no.

But men's thinking and social norms would change that's for sure.

A LARGE factor for men to marry and stick it out for life....is that it gives them safe, constant sex. If the safe were a trait with most any women out there...safe sex would be easier to get outside of just one woman for life, and I dare say...many men would go for it.

Sex and love aren't necessarily intertwined....they can be quite separate and fun things on their own.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[v1]

It sounds like a nice novel idea to have the cell kill itself if it gets infected. Sorry but life's already beat you to the punch. Cells have at least six different unique channels to apoptosis. (cellular self-destruction)

To my knowledge, all modern viruses have active mechanisms in them to disable some, most, or all of these mechanisms, because apoptosis is the body's one way of coping with an infected, malfunctioning, or cancerous cell. (apoptosis is also used in "programmed cell death" that helps certain maturation processes, for example it's why we aren't born with webbed toes, the webbing is required early in gestation but the webs remove themselves when no longer necessary) So this is nothing new, nothing novel, and the viruses have had a strong evolutionary involvement with the process. A virus that didn't disable at least some of the apoptosis mechanisms in a cell wouldn't get very far in a modern organism.

Unfortunately for living organisms, if a cell starts going on a divide-craze due to other issues, and has been altered by a virus that disables the cell's apoptosis, the cancerous cell doesn't die and grows, and there you have cancer. Because of this, viruses are strongly suspected as being a necessary instigator of cancerous growths.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[RockDoctor]

MRSA is exactly as dangerous as Staphylococcus was before the invention of antibiotics.

MRSA is "Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus"
Methicillin is a member of the class of chemicals (naturally-occurring or artificial, it doesn't matter which) called "antibiotics".

Which makes the tautology in your statement as plain as it is true.

There have almost certainly been people dying of MRSA for hundreds or thousands of years, but nobody noticed because many more people died from a myriad of other strains of SA and no one had reason to differentiate the victims of MRSA from other victims of SA. Now, for a couple of generations, fewer people have died of most of the SA strains, which makes the MRSA victims stand out a little more, err, by being dead.

Most people don't realise that this is exactly how evolution works - differential survival of variations. But that's exactly what is happening here.

If you look at a standard pack of cards, well shuffled, then the odds of pulling two jokers out of the pack at random is not high. But if you modify the pack by successively removing all cards with a number on them (in this analogy, penicillin-susceptible SA), then all the cards with kings on them (vancomycin-susceptible SA, for an example [spelling?]), then all the cards with queens on them (flucoxacillin-susceptible SA), then all cards with two-eyed jacks on them (methicillin-susceptible SA) .... you're left with a relatively high chance of drawing a couple of jokers from the modified pack. Or equivalently, getting MRSA.

Genetic gambling. Love it or loathe it, but you can't not play the game.
No, seriously, you can not not play the game.

.

(Some people take "MRSA" as "Multiply-Resistant" SA"; that doesn't affect the argument.)

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[AK Marc]

We'll land on a new planet and die a-la-War of the Worlds. We need to evolve, and social pressures have eliminated genitic evolution, so we must discover to keep up. Using that discovery to improve ourselves won't harm our long term survival unless the planet is 80%+ destroyed (and vast amounts of information/capabilities are lost). But as long as things are working well, this shouldn't have any effect on our long term survival. If it works, we make lots and use it appropriately, protecting us from anything that may crop up in the future. If you are worried about it, just save some old diseases and infect everyone with HIV at age 18. Apparently you think untreated AIDS is better for our survival. (a bit of a hyperbole, but the alternative is cervical cancer and AIDS, and to be against treating healthy people will advance those and others. So you must think cervical cancer in women above child bearing age is better for society than curing it.)

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[interkin3tic]

I've never heard of that before. Quite interesting.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[AK Marc]

And this drug is simply a previously unknown external trigger of cell death based on inappropriate cell behavior. It isn't massively different from what the cell would do on its own if so allowed. So I see this drug as much more "natural" than many here claiming it will cause massive unintended side effects. As you put it, if we were to cure all viruses, we would likely reduce the incidence of cancer.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[macsuibhne]

No, I expect the state to pay for them out of general taxation. Modern strains of TB, common in South Africa and the New York prison system require a multiple month course of very nasty, old fashioned drugs. They make you feel sick as all hell, and you can't afford them anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively_drug-resistant_tuberculosis

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[dryeo]

Both herpes are rather harmless.

Not if you get them in your eye.

Re:It's called Kalocin.

[LrdDimwit]

The drug induces apoptosis in cells that are infected. In other words, if the cell has been infected, this drug tells it to commit suicide. All the virus has to do to circumvent this is change the cell so it ignores these commands.

The usual name for cells that ignore the safeguards that tell them to stop reproducing is cancer. We've already seen some viruses getting blamed for causing cancer - that's why the HPV vaccine is such a big deal. And unless I'm missing something here, this new therapy encourages viruses (known for extremely rapid evolution) to find ways to turn cells cancerous.

Not to say it isn't a great drug. Given a choice between curing (say) Ebola, at a risk of encouraging carcinogenic mutations ... and doing nothing ... the rational choice is probably curing Ebola. But I find it unsettling.

HIV?

[webmistressrachel]

Any news on HIV / AIDS? Strange that that isn't the first virus threw into the petri dish with this stuff, to be honest.

Re:HIV?

[YodasEvilTwin]

This. If it works as well as it says it could be a major breakthrough.

Re:HIV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't work. the new miracle drug is active only versus double stranded RNA virii. HIV is a single-stranded virus.

Re:HIV?

[NNUfergs]

ADIS is not a virus, it is an immune disease caused by HIV which is a retrovirus, not a type mentioned in the study.

Re:HIV?

[ThunderBird89]

I'm not an immunologist/molecular biologist, but if this drug works by targeting the infected cells to eliminate the infection, then by the time an HIV-infection is apparent, you might as well target the whole human, and there are already several drugs that do that very effectively. Potassium Cyanide comes to mind, for one...

Re:HIV?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Any news on HIV / AIDS? Strange that that isn't the first virus threw into the petri dish with this stuff, to be honest.

You're thinking like a scientist. Think like a business man. You cure the common cold first. That gets you 9 million units of fame, some nice early revenues from cold cures, and a ginormous grant to test if it can cure HIV as well.

Well, in reality, HIV is a single-stranded retrovirus, and not a double-stranded virus. Although, if this works, it will mitigate some of the negative effects of AIDS, in that it does not appear to rely on the body's immune system.

Re:HIV?

[Lanteran]

That's stupid. A percentage of the population is naturally immune to HIV. A vaccine is a matter of genetic engineering, that's all.

Re:HIV?

[X0563511]

Not all of your cells would be infected. By that point you're already on your death bed...

Re:HIV?

[Daniel_Staal]

So you take the person into a clean room, administer the drug, wait a few weeks for their immune system to grow back (possibly from transplant or stem cell therapy), and they walk out cured. Not a bad deal.

Re:HIV?

[interkin3tic]

Oh, merely genetic engineering. That's all, is it? Well, that should be pretty simple.

I think it's less likely we'll come up with across the board, cancer-free genetic engineering on people who are past conception, than it is we'll come up with a treatment for HIV once you get it.

As an aside, I don't think genetic engineering immunity to HIV would be correctly called a "vaccine." If you're not training the immune system to recognize the infection and fight it itself, that's not a vaccine (though I could be wrong.) Immunization may be accurate.

Re:HIV?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA: "We have demonstrated that DRACOs are effective against viruses with DNA, dsRNA, positive-sense ssRNA, and negative-sense ssRNA genomes; enveloped and non-enveloped viruses; viruses that replicate in the cytoplasm and viruses that replicate in the nucleus; human, bat, and rodent viruses; and viruses that use a variety of cellular receptors"

Re:HIV?

[Paltin]

We... already have a treatment for HIV after you get it. The cocktails are now such that HIV has very little effect on life expectancy.

Re:HIV?

[geekoid]

If it only works on the 15 drugs it would be a major break through... what is seem like it can do, it's a fucking game changer.

Re:HIV?

[ceoyoyo]

You're right, you're not an immunologist.

There's a rather big difference between T-cells, which is what HIV infects, and "the whole human."

Re:HIV?

[geekoid]

I release it as a cure all, watch my stock quadruples, get a billion dollar bonus and then move on to me pet projects.

Or, you know release it slowly so the people that come after me can make the serious money.

Re:HIV?

[digitalderbs]

I'm a biophysicist that works on the flu--though not a virologist--and I'd like to mention a couple of related points. First, as another poster had stated, this does not only work for double-stranded RNA viruses. Look at table 1. The influenza virus and HIV are both very similar--class I enveloped viruses with single-stranded RNA genomes. I'd imagine this could have some effect toward HIV, as it is effective with the flu. However, it would appear that once the HIV RNA has been reverse-transcribed to cDNA and integrated into the genome, then the approach presented in this paper would not work--i.e. if you have AIDS, this won't help you.

Re:HIV?

[tverbeek]

HIV is a retrovirus, a kind of virus that a broad-spectrum "cure all" treatment would be least likely to affect. Sure it'd be worth trying at some point, but it really wouldn't be at the top of the list based on having any expectation of success.

Re:HIV?

[Firethorn]

A vaccine is a matter of genetic engineering, that's all.

You don't even need advanced direct genetic engineering; You could probably almost completely spread immunity in ~10 generations using traditional(if draconian) breeding techniques.

Re:HIV?

[Firethorn]

There's a rather big difference between T-cells, which is what HIV infects, and "the whole human."

I agree; at most you'd likely have to stick the person into an isolation area as the die-off of T-Cells blows an HIV infection into an advanced case of AIDS in a matter of hours. Of course, once HIV is purged T-Cells would quickly return to normal levels, probably a couple weeks.

Re:HIV?

[tverbeek]

Oh, please! HIV is "clever" and adaptable. But it's hard to kill only in the body. Airborne? It dies. Quickly, and without a struggle.

Re:HIV?

[ThunderBird89]

Well, I refreshed an old memory from high school biology again. Thanks!

As the reply to your post suggests, with this, a case of HIV may even be survivable and curable (provided the naturally harbored bacteria and viruses don't get out of control once the T-cells are gone). Question: could the same be achieved with a massive immunosuppressant dose, or do those suppress another aspect of the immune system?

Re:HIV?

[j-pimp]

We... already have a treatment for HIV after you get it. The cocktails are now such that HIV has very little effect on life expectancy.

Even if money were no object (with socialized medicine it still comes from somewhere), There is a big difference between "take this drug forever" and take it for a short period of time. If you have aids, you can't go living someplace where you can't get your medicine, so that makes climbing a mountain, or living in space or a submarine harder. Most people don't want to go to that extreme, but how about disappearing for a few days?

Re:HIV?

[tibit]

Quadruple stock value? Haha. There are companies out there that had much lesser drugs approved and their stock would go up in value by more than an order of magnitude. If there was a company to commercialize that, went to an IPO, then got an FDA approval, there'd be millionaires left and right made out of this.

Re:HIV?

[interkin3tic]

So then I'm right!!! :-)

I meant to say "cure." My apologies.

Re:HIV?

[ultramk]

You're misreading.

"The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it should work against all viruses,” says Todd Rider."

So it's not targeting the virus itself, just the cell.

Re:HIV?

[interkin3tic]

According to the literature I'm finding, H1N1 is a single stranded RNA virus as are rhinoviruses. Haven't checked the others, and I should probably RTFA, but where did you get that information?

Re:HIV?

[eparker05]

I was going to post that exact quote. Oh well, you beat me to it.

For reference, HIV is a ssRNA virus, meaning that this treatment has the potential to be effective.

The double-stranded portion of the acronym DRACO is referring to double stranded transcription products contained within the host cells, not the nucleic acids contained within the viral capsid. I imagine that they did not used HIV because it requires high bio-hazard clearance to work with compared to the many of the viruses used in the study (although the fact that they used H1N1 makes me question my own logic).

Re:HIV?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Thinking like a businessman means never curing the common cold at all; a businessman would use his ability to cure colds to produce effective cold remedies, but not total cures, in ten thousand flavors and variations. More money in it that way.

Except you get over the cold in 3 days or something anyway. So all they can sell is an instant cure.

Re:HIV?

[nosfucious]

If I think like a business man, then I want a drug which is taken regularly* and prevents or drastically reduces the symptoms of the common cold.

*The actual value of "regularly" is (1) sufficient to line my pockets forever, and (2) not be a PITA so that those that can afford the drug keep taking it.

There isn't any money to be made from really curing the disease. The big money is managing the disease.

Re:HIV?

[LordKronos]

He never said it was a virus. He said destroying the immune system is essentially the same thing as AIDS. Of course he's wrong there. The difference (I think) is that with AIDS, the HIV virus is still present and keeps the immune system from regenerating. With this idea, you'd temporarily have the same effect as having HIV cause AIDS, but there would be nothing stopping your immune system from regenerating over time (other than contracting some other sort of infection and dying).

Re:HIV?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

There isn't any money to be made from really curing the disease. The big money is managing the disease.

It's a cold. It's cured in 3 days. What are you going to sell me if not instant relief.

Re:HIV?

[JordanL]

Immunosuppressants don't cause apoptosis (cell death) of your immune system phages. They limit the ability of your immune system to be effective, not always but sometimes by getting into the anti-body process and mucking around.

Re:HIV?

[AK Marc]

I've had H1N1. It's the flu, no worse than any others. It had a massive kill rate initially for social, not medical reasons. The doctors looked only at the numbers and screwed up massively. And because they are doctors, could never admit a mistake, for they are God. The first cases were destitute farmers in a country with no safety nets. They had the choice of work hard manual labor until they died in the fields as pig farmers, or rest for a week, lose their jobs, then die of starvation 6 months later. They worked. H1N1 killed by encouraging bacterial infections in the lungs. Pneumonia killed those who didn't seek medical attention until they were terminal. H1N1 itself didn't kill at a rate above any other flu when it was finally wide-spread in industrialized countries. But, for whatever reason, it lead to more fatalities in those who caused their own complications by refusing to rest or seek any medical attention at all. So we call it "pig flu" because it started in a pig farming area in Mexico, and we still incorrectly assign it a higher death rate because it initially struck a population that deliberately chose a path that increased the harm to themselves. Neither being a particularly appropriate label.

Re:HIV?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I'm not an immunologist/molecular biologist, but if this drug works by targeting the infected cells to eliminate the infection, then by the time an HIV-infection is apparent, you might as well target the whole human,

I'm not either, but this is how I understand it:

The HIV will only have infected a subset of the cells. The remainder are just fine. Full-blown AIDS occurs when enough of them have been infected that the immune system is working below par - at least partly because some of the cells reacting to a current infection are HIV infected and respond by releasing more HIV (compromising things further) rather than performing their normal function.

Kill off the infected ones and the immune system should be immediately improved (though not fully recovered) because there are still significant numbers of uninfected cells and the reactions to other infections will not amp up the HIV infection.

Of course if the patient is so close to gone that he needs to live in a bubble there's not much left. But (if I have it right) this drug wouldn't touch properly functioning cells so it's not going to make things worse even temporarily. (Except perhaps for other reactions to the dieoff of infected cells.O)

Re:HIV?

[xero314]

Any news on HIV / AIDS? Strange that that isn't the first virus threw into the petri dish with this stuff, to be honest.

Curing AIDS would cause an extreme negative impact on many pharmaceutical companies revenue stream. Of course that would rely on HIV being the actual cause of AIDS.

Re:HIV?

[phoenix321]

Bone marrow constantly builds new immune cells. Patients kept in total quarantine will survive when no other diseases can reach them until their immune system is built up again. Problem solved.

Procedure is used for a Leukemia and other diseases, so there exists medical experience on it.

Re:HIV?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

However, it would appear that once the HIV RNA has been reverse-transcribed to cDNA and integrated into the genome, then the approach presented in this paper would not work--i.e. if you have AIDS, this won't help you.

Won't CURE you, because it won't clean out the dormant virus. But if you're taking it when the virus activates it will kill off the affected cells. So taking it in an ongoing fashion should stop the effects of AIDS and gradually reduce the population of dormant infected cells as they become activated and then die.

Might be interesting to see if it could be combined with another drug to trigger the activation of dormant HIV (preferably activating just the virus, not the normal functions of uninfected cells). A couple rounds of that should clean out most of the dormant infection.

Re:HIV?

[PRMan]

Actually, the "swine flu" ended up being far less deadly than most "pedestrian" flus. It's the media that can't admit they were wrong.

Re:HIV?

[Nethemas the Great]

Don't worry, for reasons of X this drug will not be approved for use in the treatment of Y. Accordingly you will still need to pay D dollars annually to treat symptoms in the absence of a viable alternative cure.

Re:HIV?

[Nethemas the Great]

The WHO, CDC and their kin were looking for funding and policy changes that would establish the infrastructure for future problems. Of course there's nothing like a crisis to spur governments, especially democracies into action. So, they leveraged the media to spread panic and fear without really claiming anything more than "this looks like the 1918 Spanish flu".

Re:HIV?

[ceoyoyo]

Possibly. I'm not sure how widespread an HIV infection is. If a person has a decent T cell count to start with, they might well be able to weather the interval.

Anyway, you can do just fine without your immune system for a short period of time. I'm currently working with a trial that involves completely obliterating the immune system (not just the t-cells) and then replacing it using stem cells.

Re:HIV?

[ceoyoyo]

You wouldn't want to use an immunosuppressant, which just modify immune system without killing the cells. High dose chemo would wipe your immune system though, and then you could reconstruct it using stem cells, either harvested from the patient before hand, or donated. I'm working on a trial that does just that, except for multiple sclerosis, but here's a story about someone trying out the idea on HIV: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/02/should-we-be-trying-harder-to-find-a-cure-for-aids/

From the story it seems that HIV can remain in a non-immune reservoir somewhere in the body though, so you want to use stem cells from someone with a natural immunity.

Re:HIV?

[Chris Burke]

So you take the person into a clean room, administer the drug, wait a few weeks for their immune system to grow back (possibly from transplant or stem cell therapy), and they walk out cured. Not a bad deal.

Yes it would have to be a transplant or stem cell therapy since HIV infects the bone marrow which produces blood and immune cells, and so would necessarily have to be killed.

There are many possible problems and complications from a bone marrow transplant. Stem cell therapy would get rid of the greatest one, the rejection of non-closely matched marrow, but many would remain. Without that therapy, it would be very dangerous to use this route in the majority of cases where close matches can't be found. Leukemia patients won't undergo a transplant in the absence of a close match until the leukemia is about to go into the acute phase and kill them.

A bone marrow transplant has already been used to cure AIDS. But it is not clear that this is the best choice if you have access to modern AIDS drugs.

Re:HIV?

[Daniel_Staal]

It wouldn't necessarily have to be either one, if the drug is targeted enough and the body can recover. Assuming the drug only kills infected cells, and has a 100% kill rate, it's likely it would leave some cells intact that hadn't been infected. Not enough to support normal immune response on their own, but perhaps enough to regrow the rest naturally.

This of course is wild speculation; we wouldn't know until we try. The main point is still that if you can kill (just) the infected cells fairly easily, you are well on your way to designing a treatment. It may not be simple, and it may not be cheap, but you should have options.

Re:HIV?

[Belial6]

If your going to get all draconian, you could just inject every infant with it, and have it cured in a generation.

Re:HIV?

[eparker05]

Biosafety clearance is a complicated subject and ease of transmission can have as much to do with a high level as virulence. I just looked it up and both HIV and influenza are both BSL 2 (fairly low, but not trivially so)

Re:HIV?

[Eskarel]

Which it did. The spanish flu of 1918 killed a lot of people for the same reasons that H1N1 did. That is to say, not because the flu itself was particularly awful, but because people were living in conditions where their survival rates of flu were particularly low. A lot of the spanish flu deaths were soldiers who were stuck in freezing cold trenches with inadequate supplies or people back at home who were living in the same kinds of conditions that the folks in Mexico who died did.

Re:HIV?

[user flynn]

Actually, the "swine flu" ended up being far less deadly than most "pedestrian" flus. It's the media that can't admit they were wrong.

No. Media couldn't resist the opportunity to pun on "When pigs fly". It's that simple. The swine flu.. blah blah blah...

    It'll happen again tomorrow (media not resisting urge to pun-ish its consumers). Like my sig... a cow word is moo.

Re:HIV?

[AK Marc]

without really claiming anything more than "this looks like the 1918 Spanish flu"

Who added "that killed millions" at the end of that statement? Everyone I saw that the media bothered to quote was a doctor or a non-doctor spokesperson for an organization of doctors.

Re:HIV?

[ldobehardcore]

I'll see you and raise:

If thought like a businessman, I would create a disease that would cause cold symptoms, but be more contagious.
Step two would then be to make a patent medicine that can treat the discomfort slightly from the cold, and sell it cheaply enough that the public would be convinced that it's a good deal.

Re:HIV?

[Feanil]

It's much harder to get access to HIV for lab testing than it is to get say H1N1 or some of the other viruses tested. But now that they have shown some effectiveness with their process, I would not be surprised if that is future work they are going to try to do.

Re:HIV?

[omnichad]

Withholding all treatment for those infected? Why wouldn't they reproduce?

Re:HIV?

[Chris Burke]

It wouldn't necessarily have to be either one, if the drug is targeted enough and the body can recover. Assuming the drug only kills infected cells, and has a 100% kill rate, it's likely it would leave some cells intact that hadn't been infected. Not enough to support normal immune response on their own, but perhaps enough to regrow the rest naturally.

A fair point, you wouldn't necessarily have to transplant, but keep in mind:

Outside of rejection, the biggest danger of marrow transplants is the period of time where you have literally no immune system (and the period where it remains weak which lasts much longer).

I don't know what percentage of marrow cells are infected in people with HIV, but I'm wagering it's enough where you're talking about significantly increasing the tiniest-infection-will-kill-you recovery time if you don't give the patient new marrow to start developing immune cells quickly.

So if we're keeping stem cell grown marrow cells on the table to eliminate the rejection issue, I'm not sure what the benefit of letting the marrow grow back naturally and thus slowly is supposed to be. And if we're already going to be giving them new marrow, it might make more sense to ensure we've killed 100% of the infected cells by killing 100% of marrow cells.

Re:HIV?

[webmistressrachel]

Smug little syntax troll... it's a typo, not my syntax.

"Any news on HIV / AIDS? Strange that this isn't the first virus they threw into the petri dish with this stuff, to be honest."

There, happy?

Re:HIV?

[webmistressrachel]

WTF? For decades the fact that they aren't the same thing has been known. Advanced Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome is a consequence of HIV, and is damage done to the body by HIV (and other things), not a virus per se, or so leaflets from the City Council and NHS say (last I checked, say a year ago).

If my facts are wrong, correct me and provide references, that's why we're here, to discuss, and learn. Don't sneer about 99% of the idiots on Slashdot, esp. from an AC banner.

Re:HIV?

[Firethorn]

Well, the first part is 'it varies' - from hardly any infected T-Cells, to so many infected that are triggering that the immune system collapses. My concern is that even infected T-Cells do their job until the HIV triggers; so you could have a lot of infected T-Cells dying, it's just that in this case they're dying early without releasing a payload of HIV. So somebody with a well supressed HIV infection might have over 50% of the cells infected, but most aren't actively producing HIV.

I know that you can do fine without an immune system for a short period; but I also know it's pretty standard to keep you in isolation for that period.

So my thing would be:
Step 1: Get you in as good health as practical
Step 2: Stick you in isolation
Step 3: Provide treatment
Step 4: Release from isolation once tests show that immunity has sufficiently recovered

Re:HIV?

[Firethorn]

Good point. Forgot to stick the 'without total population collapse' in there. Immune individuals are only a couple percent at the moment.

Re:HIV?

[ceoyoyo]

A few weeks or a month in a hospital isolation ward would be a pretty small price to pay for curing or preventing AIDS. You'd be better off than most immunoablated patients as well because you'd only be short T-cells.

Re:HIV?

[Firethorn]

I mentioned nothing about withholding treatment. I mentioned breeding techniques. Withholding treatment would be ineffective; the disease isn't actually deadly enough.

What it'd amount to is that once we determined the genetic factors leading to immunity that we place heavy motivators towards breeding with immune individuals, perhaps even using artificial insemination. Not knowing how the immunity works - whether it's dominant or resessive is only 1 question, I can't make a complete plan, of course.

Re:HIV?

[jahudabudy]

The initial morbidity rates in Mexico, where H1N1 made it's first major appearance, were far greater than typical flu morbidity rates. Initial reaction was based on the assumption that these would be the morbidity rates across all populations H1N1 spread to. Turns out, this assumption was incorrect. For various reasons, most other populations infected suffered lower morbidity rates than typical flu strains.

Re:HIV?

[Lanteran]

He was just rambling on as if a cure was impossible, when there's a natural immunity and drug cocktails which make the disease livable. But IIRC, the gene that causes immunity to HIV was isolated recently- I'm thinking it causes receptors that HIV binds to on the white blood cell to not emerge above the surface. Interestingly enough, though, bone marrow transplants may be enough. I've read of something last year where a Leukemia patient, also suffering from HIV, got a bone marrow transplant from someone that was immune. After a while, he showed no signs of the virus. If bone marrow transplant safety could be improved, and the marrow cells grown rather than extracted, it could be a viable cure. Of course, it just said he had an HIV infection- nothing about full blown AIDS. Still, at worst it would prevent a person from being totally immunocompromised.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.html

Re:HIV?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

. Give a bald guy his hair back with the threat of having it all fall out permanently if he stops paying for your drug, and he'll sell his family into eternal slavery if that's what it takes to avoid losing his hair a second time.

It's been done.

Re:HIV?

[Yamioni]

Exactly, I can take a decongestant and couple Ibuprofin a couple times a day for the week it takes my body to realize the cold is gone. I'd pay $5-$10 a pill if I could take it on day three to tell my body to stop producing phlegm, the battle is over.

Re:HIV?

[wkcole]

Any news on HIV / AIDS? Strange that that isn't the first virus threw into the petri dish with this stuff, to be honest.

Not strange at all. HIV is a slow and fragile retrovirus, which makes it very difficult to work with in a cell culture environment. Note that all of the viruses cited cause fast-moving broad epidemics because they can infect through air and dry surface contact, while the spread of HIV has been controlled largely by behavior because it is relatively hard to pass between living humans, much less between cell cultures in petri dishes. If HIV was as fast-acting and robust as influenza A viruses or even polio, we wouldn't think of it as a particularly scary STD, we'd think of it as the disease that largely depopulated the planet in the 1980's.

In Before Zombie Plague

[hbean]

Just sayin...it thinks all your braincells are viruses and turns you into a ZOMBIE.

Re:In Before Zombie Plague

[X0563511]

Buzzkill: no, it would just kill your ass or turn you into a vegetable

Re:In Before Zombie Plague

[vlm]

Just sayin...it thinks all your braincells are viruses and turns you into a ZOMBIE.

Naah your blood/brain barrier is remarkably efficient. Thats the good news. The bad news is this probably won't cure viral meningitis unless you inject it directly into the spinal fluid.

The really bad situation is this kills virus infected cells. Well.. research some autoimmune based digestive system diseases: the simplified version is your digestive system eats a protein (gluten, soy, etc) that your immune system dislikes, so your immune system exerts great effort on destroying your digestive system. Luckily it usually doesn't work terribly well, and results at worst in long term malnutrition or starvation. My son is in that situation. As long as he does not eat the protein that agitates his immune system he's all good.

Anyway, imagine instead of a weakened tired out immune system, this magic drug being administered, and it finds your intestinal walls have absorbed a cow / chicken / pig / tobacco virus... And this magic drug being quite strong... on a sy fy network movie special, this drug could liquify your entire digestive system if you ate a virus infested plant or animal. That could be a problem, yeah.

Re:In Before Zombie Plague

[Yamioni]

And this magic drug being quite strong... on a sy fy network movie special, this drug could liquify your entire digestive system if you ate a virus infested plant or animal. That could be a problem, yeah.

That would just be irresponsible. Such a problem would only occur with an overdose of the medication. The point of having dosages on medications is to limit the duration of their effect on the body before the renal system filters them out. If you gave a person a dose of this medicine with literally hundereds of grams of active ingredient, and the person just so happened to have every cell of their digestive tract infected with the virus, then sure, you might liquify their organs. Of course if that many cells are infected they're probably already too far gone to live anyway.

What's a virus?

[lymond01]

So does a false positive mean you're dead?

Drug: Must find viruses. Oh, there's one...I think. And that one too. Oooh, actually, they're ALL viruses!

Re:What's a virus?

[michelcolman]

Yes, I was wondering that too. Our cells carry loads of genetic material picked up pretty much everywhere. They just go "hey look, some code, I wonder what will happen if I execute it". We just call it a virus if it makes us sick (or rather, sick enough to notice). So what if this medicine attacks something that has already infected all of the cells in our body without us noticing?

Re:What's a virus?

[kylemonger]

Maybe. But since only an idiot would take the drug unless they knew they were already infected with something bad, I'd say the risk is acceptable.

Re:What's a virus?

[DemonGenius]

IIRC, certain viruses leave their signature on blank sections of our DNA. Here is something I looked up mid-comment. Given this, I have all confidence that this drug may someday backfire with disastrous results and, therefore, I hope this is priced so high that only the extremely wealthy can afford it >:)

Re:What's a virus?

[gcnaddict]

I'd be more concerned if it treats cells infected with a latent virus in the fashion described here, to be honest.

For instance, lets assume Alzheimer's is caused (as suspected) by a combination of a defective APoE gene and an HSV1 infection. So if the vast majority of brain cells are infected but the brain is (more or less) still highly functional... wouldn't this theoretically kill every one of those brain cells, essentially advancing alzheimer's itself many-fold in a matter of weeks?

Re:What's a virus?

[btk1137]

After RTFA, I checked dsRNA, wiki claims its pretty much specific to some RNA viruses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA If my cells are trying to make this from some ancient virus, I'll bet my immune system wouldn't be happy about it anyways. There may be other dangers involved, however. They probably would adjust the dose s.t. it wouldn't cause too much damage (hopefully anything like this would come out in the clinical trials.

Re:What's a virus?

[btk1137]

and by RTFA i mean abstract :)

Re:What's a virus?

[X0563511]

It sounds like it only kills cells where the virus is actually replicating

Re:What's a virus?

[beelsebob]

No, we call it a virus if it injects code into a cell that didn't have that code before. Viruses don't have to make us sick - just be a bit of genetic code that inserts itself into ours. Hence why computer viruses are so named –they're bits of code that inject themselves into the processes of a system.

Re:What's a virus?

[mhajicek]

You do realize that RNA is made based on the code in the DNA, right?

Re:What's a virus?

[SecurityTheatre]

The virus marker in question is the production of long, double-strand RNA. This is not something that ever happens in a healthy cell, and I don't think it happens in cells that contain dormant virus material (such as herpes), which I believe are stored as DNA fragments during their dormant period.

It's a very interesting discovery.

Re:What's a virus?

[bberens]

Yes, and/or it would theoretically stop the progression of the alzheimer's if you get it early enough in the process.

Re:What's a virus?

[vlm]

Our cells carry loads of genetic material picked up pretty much everywhere. They just go "hey look, some code, I wonder what will happen if I execute it".

There are now at least two valid interpretations of "Humans are DNA based windows users"

Re:What's a virus?

[overshoot]

Our cells carry loads of genetic material picked up pretty much everywhere.

They're called Endogenous Retroviruses.

Abbie is never gonna forgive me.

Re:What's a virus?

[ceoyoyo]

No, your cells don't just pick up any old bit of RNA/DNA and run it. A virus infecting a cell is an invasive thing, that cells are designed to protect against, and generally makes the cell pretty useless afterwards, as far as you're concerned. Occasionally, some viral DNA might get inserted into a cell and the cell will keep functioning. If it's a germ line cell, that viral DNA gets passed on. But that doesn't happen very often.

Re:What's a virus?

[mdielmann]

The virus marker in question is the production of long, double-strand RNA. This is not something that ever happens in a healthy cell, and I don't think it happens in cells that contain dormant virus material (such as herpes), which I believe are stored as DNA fragments during their dormant period.

It's a very interesting discovery.

So, if you could cause dormant viruses to become active while taking this drug, would it attack them? Looks like maybe a specific drug cocktail (drug that activates herpes + the wonder drug) could take out a number of viruses that would normally stay under the radar.

Re:What's a virus?

[tloh]

From the abstract:

We have developed a new broad-spectrum antiviral approach, dubbed Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer (DRACO) that selectively induces apoptosis in cells containing viral dsRNA, rapidly killing infected cells without harming uninfected cells.

I don't believe the biology of the human species utilizes Double-stranded RNA under any circumstances. Consequently, although it might be present in some of our genetic code, no healthy human cells should ever *express* dsRNA unless the cellular machinery has been hijacked by viral code. They did say testing it on 11 kinds of healthy mammalian cells produced no ill effects, but I guess that is by no means an exhaustive representation of a complete human being.

However, one wonders if unleashing this drug to fight an infection might produce a cytokine storm-like response in the host. In the worst of flu strains, it isn't the virus itself that creates the most damage - it is the stress of the body's response to the infection that ultimately causes the most suffering. Even if the virus itself may be relatively benign, a large enough infection can conceivably result in so many dead/dying cells that the toxic environment created by the big die-off will push the healthy cells off a cliff.

One also wonders how this drug may affect any viruses that have a symbiotic relationship with things we depend on, like gut-bacteria. Anyone who have undergone treatment with potent broad-spectrum antibiotics will tell you that recolonizing the GI tract with things like pro-biotics is often necessary to avoid certain types of diarrhea.

Re:What's a virus?

[tloh]

Michel Colman? Do I know you from somewhere ?

Re:What's a virus?

[Oligonicella]

I'm unaware of any gut bacteria that have symbiotic relationships with viruses. Could you give me some references? Interesting concept to read up on.

But, comparing a drug that targets dsRNA specifically with broad-spectrum antibiotics isn't really a valid comparison, because even if your hypothesis about symbiosis is true, it won't be the bulk of the bacteria, so the death rate won't be comparable.

Re:What's a virus?

[Noishe]

You do realize that RNA is made based on the code in the DNA, right?

The same way cd's are made based on the code (data) in your hard disk.

Yes, data is encoded.
No, the format is not even remotely close.
Yes, it's really really easy to tell the difference.

Re:What's a virus?

[DemonGenius]

Very informative, glad someone RTFA (A as in abstract).

Re:What's a virus?

[tloh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_ecology

These speak very generally about the subject at hand. But the GI environment is very typical of the kinds of microbial eco-systems where viruses and bacteria interact in complex relationships.

Years ago, I spent a semester at a UCSF lab that investigated pulmonary infections among other things that affect post-operative immuno-compromised patients. One of the most important things I learned from the scientists was how little traditional microbiology tells us about the broad microbial ecology of prevalent health issues. Given the intimacy of relationships between viruses and bacteria, it is far *less* likely that the bulk of bacteria *won't* be affected by an agent that can decimate viruses.

Re:What's a virus?

[AK Marc]

It could prevent Alzheimers and arrest the development if administered at the first signs. But you are right in that if you wait until someone is already terminal to kill all infected cells, you won't be doing them any favors. Give this to all the healthy people, and you'll prevent disease with almost no side effects. Wait until they are very very sick and you'll likely make it worse. Give it to everyone on the planet regardless of whether they are sick and you'll be able to wipe out HIV, HPV, Alzheimer's and such in a couple weeks (even if the effect of the "cure can't be well measured for years, as HPV is one that causes something else many many years later.

Re:What's a virus?

[Verity_Crux]

A few years from now we'll find that there are actually helpful viruses in our digestive tract. Welcome to the next wave of malnutrition -- not that we've mastered any of the present food intolerance issues.

Re:What's a virus?

[jamesh]

So does a false positive mean you're dead?

Drug: Must find viruses. Oh, there's one...I think. And that one too. Oooh, actually, they're ALL viruses!

A Y-chromosone? That can't be good... better kill that cell just to be sure.

Re:What's a virus?

[gcnaddict]

No, I'm speaking about healthy people (say, people in their 40s or 50s) who aren't showing signs of the disease. If current theories about the disease stemming from decades of damage from a prolonged cranial HSV1 infection are true, this drug could easily eradicate the vast majority of brain cells in a matter of weeks. These people would have appeared, prior to such an event, otherwise completely healthy with no remarkable symptoms of the disease.

Re:What's a virus?

[michelcolman]

No, but I'd be interested to learn of a namesake who works there?

Re:What's a virus?

[tloh]

we were manufacturing technicians working drug production in south san francisco. I left last year. haven't kept in touch. what do you do?

Re:What's a virus?

[michelcolman]

I'm a pilot for Air France, living in Belgium :-)

Wow, just wow.

[Hazee Daze]

This kind of story is one of the reasons that I love Slashdot so much. What a fantastic breakthrough (if it pans out).

Re: Wow, just wow.

[dtmos]

If Slashdot impresses you, try EurekAlert.

Re: Wow, just wow.

[JonySuede]

thank you, I love slahdot for comment likes yours

Re: Wow, just wow.

[Lije Baley]

So you like having your expectations jacked way up, and then replaced with utter disappointment?

Re: Wow, just wow.

[StandardAI]

The only thing that is likely to stop this are the pharmaceutical companies.

Re: Wow, just wow.

[Yamioni]

To be fair, most of the disappointment comes from the comments. ;-)

Not sufficent

[bigsexyjoe]

For a drug that cures any virus to work, it has to work in a manner that keeps the profits up for big pharma and the medical industry in general. If it doesn't do that, you can't have it.

Re:Not sufficent

[Chemisor]

Don't worry. DRACO is patented until 2029.

Re:Not sufficent

[geekoid]

Bullshit.. as has been seen time and time again.

The self interest of a CEO to personally gain billions outweighs their desire to see their competitors make money.

Of course, a person with the brains like yours is bound to jump to the first knee jerk reaction and not think or actually study the industry they are talking about.

Re:Not sufficent

[Oligonicella]

Shhhhhhhh. Don't spoil the dream. sig: Just because the people at /. can't type faster than a few words a minute doesn't mean I need a full minute to type a five word response.

Re:Not sufficent

[Oligonicella]

Obviously, it bothers me enough that, in my irritation, I forgot ./ requires br's.

Re:Not sufficent

[Culture20]

This is the problem with all anti-biotics, unless they are 100% effective, they will essentially weaken the host to the infections evolutionary future whenever it eventually comes back to them (if it does) and they will get reinfected. And depending on the infection itself, it could very well be lethal the next time.

Okay then. How about if everyone takes this drug worldwide all at once? The only new viruses would be crossover from other species.

Re:Not sufficent

[LordKronos]

I never understand this logic. We hear it all the time: this drug/cure will never make it to market because there's more money to be made treating than curing.

In every single industry, people always talk about how short sighted businesses are. They do things that are absolutely detrimental to their long term outlook because it gives them short term gains (and not even necessarily huge gains). Yet every time it comes to pharmaceutical companies, the story always changes to "they would never dare reap the unimaginably enormous short term and medium term gains because it would hurt the company 10 or 20 years down the road". That's total BS. The profit potential is so huge, no executives could pass that up, and if word of it ever got out, the shareholders would sue the executives into the ground.

Aside from that, it's ridiculous to even think that it would destroy the companies long term. First of all, it's not likely to wipe every virus from the face of the earth. The drug will continue to be needed. Second, there are still non-virual infections to be cured and treated. Third, there are countless other sources of revenue, such as pain killers, treatment for genetic disorders, boner pills, etc.

In short, this whole idea that they would bury such a cure is one of the worst thought out conspiracy theories I've ever heard.

Re:Not sufficent

[Eskarel]

The statement is true, so far as it goes.

When given the choice between researching a treatment and researching a cure, most companies will select the treatment. This is partially because treatments have a higher long term pay off(you can't charge some one $12,000 for a pill as most folks can't pay, but you can charge them $100 a month for 10 years), but mostly because treatments are a lot easier than cures. A treatment only involves knowing what a disease is doing whereas a cure generally involves knowing how and potentially why. That doesn't mean that no one is research cures, just that more people are researching and marketing treatments.

If a cure drops into the laps of pharmaceutical companies however, they are more than happy to sell it, both in terms of the immediate profits and perhaps from a more cynical perspective that people who are still alive can get sick again later.

In addition, supressing something like this is actually fairly difficult. Most countries have the capacity to seize intellectual property under certain circumstances and the political windfall of releasing a cure for everything is a lot more attractive than the donations of the pharmaceutical companies. Holding back an electric car is fairly easy, holding back a major cure is virtually impossible. You'd have to supress all knowledge of even the existence of the cure.

Re:I am Legend?

[rubycodez]

good news about that latent zombification side-effect, it has been confirmed the vaccine turns people into an immortal zombie! we're saved!

We are doomed then

[omfglearntoplay]

Because doctors will prescribe it like the plague, then everything will be immune to it in a matter of a decade. Great. Stop having kids now.

Re:We are doomed then

[Whorhay]

The mechanics of how the drug works should actually make simple virus mutations incredibly unlikely to result in resistance.

The drug is a protien that is triggered by the virus's production of double stranded DNA. Double Stranded DNA is actually how your immune system already recognizes a viral infection, when it's detected it sets of a cascade of events that should ultimately end in the cells elimination. The way most viruses beat the immune system response is by blocking or attacking one or more of the cascaded steps before cell death. This protein shortcuts all of those steps and makes the jump straight from detection of double stranded DNA to triggered cell suicide, there was a fancy word for it that I can't remember.

In short the only mutation that would result in resistance/immunity would be for the virus to no longer cause double stranded DNA to be created. Which is a mutation that likely would have happened already if it's possible, as it would completely avoid the immune systems response.

Re:We are doomed then

[losfromla]

Stop having kids now.

Funny, I think this is the default state for most slashdotters, thus as unnecessary to say as say "Keep breathing" under normal circumstances.

Re:We are doomed then

[HungryHobo]

Actually from looking at how it works it'd probably be damned hard to evolve a resistance to it since it targets something extremely central to the virus life cycle so that may take quite a while.

Far harder than antibiotic resistance for bacteria

Re:We are doomed then

[nitehawk214]

Because doctors will prescribe it like the plague, then everything will be immune to it in a matter of a decade. Great. Stop having kids now.

You should find yourself a new doctor. My doctor does not prescribe the plague.

Re:We are doomed then

[BajTaur]

I can think of a few mutations/adaptions that might work. One of the simplest would be for viruses to acquire, possibly from the treatment, an inactive chunk of the drug/protein. If this chunk is secreted it may induce an antigenic response against an epitope on the peptide. The end result is that the host would develop a humoral response against the drug, coating it in antibodies and blocking its activity. Honestly, the virus might not need to do anything, people might just develop a sensitivity if they get injected a few times.

Re:We are doomed then

[bane2571]

But honestly how many times is one person going to need the cure for HIV? I'm more curious if this is on of those "ready in 5 years" science articles that means we'll never see the drug.

Re:We are doomed then

[BajTaur]

This is still at the basic biology stage and if you look at their viability figures it does look like the drug is showing some toxicity (15% or so?) in uninfected cells. I'd guess even ready in 10 years would be pretty optimistic.

But honestly how many times is one person going to need the cure for HIV?

The problem is more that the construct is basically the same for every virus to be targeted. So you take it to treat HIV, hepititis, pandemic flu etc. And when you use it to treat one of these you probably aren't becoming immune to the disease in question so someone might get HIV a second/third time (because some people are idiots). However, sensitivity might develop the second or third time it is used for anything. HIV is sort of a special case though since it suppresses the immune system. Humoral response would be B-cells but they might not activate properly with the T-cells wiped out. Anyhow, this is all hypothetical. Actually getting these proteins into cells in a human is a lot harder than getting them into cells on a plate.

Re:We are doomed then

[AK Marc]

It attacks the host cells, not the virus, so there's no mechanism for the virus to evolve unless it evolves to attack different host species, in which case it's a win for us anyway. "OMG evolution will make it worse" is nonsensical and stupid. We should over-prescribe it. It can cure infections before you have the disease. Healthy people can be cured while incubating, before they are even sick. Take it every day to remain healthy. If everyone did, then most diseases would be gone in a few weeks. How is that bad? IF you kill 100% of something, there's nothing left to evolve.

Re:We are doomed then

[JordanL]

You should really RTFA before you comment on the consequences.

The important question is:

[rongage]

What exactly does this do to the host organism (us) that is carrying these infected (and sub sequentially killed off) cells?

Since I don't speak micro-biologist, I'm not sure that was even addressed or answered in the article.
 

Re:The important question is:

[afidel]

Almost all cells that are infected will be destroyed anyways once the virus takes it over and uses it as a replication factory so it should be a net win if it is administered before the virus has really had a chance to take off.

Re:The important question is:

[X0563511]

You'll get really sick as all the dead cells and/or pathogens release toxic nastiness all at once, and provided you survive that you'll get better.

I forget what this is called, but it's actually a problem when killing off a large infection with antibiotics or such.

Re:The important question is:

[SecurityTheatre]

Once a cell is virus infected with this type of virus, it is already dead. If you can kill it before it replicates a bunch more virus material, you stand a much better chance.

Re:The important question is:

[Nixoloco]

I believe you are referring to a Herxheimer reaction.
However, it is usually only associated with the death of bacteria and not virus infected cells.

Re:The important question is:

[rts008]

I think 'endotoxic shock' was the term used in the past for that.
It's been 20+ years since I learned this in school, so the name may have changed.

Re:The important question is:

[X0563511]

That's similar, yes, but I thought there was something less specific.

Wouldn't you experience something anyways, due to the "uncontrolled" release of the cellular contents, including the chemicals used for apoptis? I wish I could remember the name what I'm thinking of. Looking for it is failing me.

Something you might describe as 'runaway autophagy'. Bleh. Can't find it.

Re:The important question is:

[SecurityTheatre]

There was extensive discussion of in vivo tests on rats and how the drug penetrated various organ systems, etc.

It apparently "cured" rats of a variety of nasty viruses in just a couple of hours. Crazy...

Re:The important question is:

[X0563511]

Isn't there a difference between the "slow and steady" rate during the normal process and "all at once" that you would see with this?

Re:The important question is:

[JordanL]

I think you are mixing two things up: I believe you are talking about a cytokine storm, however that is not related directly to the destruction of cells themselves, but rather the overexcited immune response to a viral infection. In other words, during a cytokine storm, we see the products of this drug applied to health AND infected cells almost indiscriminately.

It's unlikely that this drug would commonly result in things similar to a cytokine storm, since it apparently has absolutely no effect on healthy cells, but it might be possible if you had a sufficiently widespread infection, (which are the kind likely to cause cytokine storms anyway, so perhaps even in that case this would be a good thing).

Re:The important question is:

[Nixoloco]

He might be thinking more generally of sepsis (or blood poisoning) which might be caused by a lot of things including wide spread cell death, but it would still have to be a lot of cell death from a really widespread infection.

Re:The important question is:

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you're too lazy to even look at the article? :) The abstract explains in fairly plain English the tests they've done.
From the paper:

We have created DRACOs and shown that they are nontoxic in 11 mammalian cell types and effective against 15 different viruses.....We have also demonstrated that DRACOs can rescue mice challenged with H1N1 influenza.

So they've tested on a number of different tissue types, and tested in mice and found no problem. Whether it will cause problems in humans or not is still unknown, but it looks promising.

In the MIT press release they have some nice pictures that demonstrate little damage (at least, visibly) to healthy cells.

Re:The important question is:

[X0563511]

Cytokine Storm was what I was thinking of specifically, but being a non-expert I was including something more general like sepsis in my thoughts.

Side effects

[immakiku]

With the existence of auto-immune disorders as a warning sign, I can see that this will have lots and lots of trouble getting approval.

Re:Side effects

[HungryHobo]

What has this to do with the immune system? it's remarkable in that it's almost totally independent of the host immune system.

Re:I am Legend?

[GameboyRMH]

The only nasty side effect that might take place is a huge leap in the evolution of viruses. The stuff that does survive will be some extremely nasty sci-fi shit, including, I wouldn't be surprised, viruses that "hold the body hostage" by infecting critical cells and the biological equivalent of polymorphic viruses.

Todd Rider

[Scareduck]

Also the man who has so far explained why inertial-confinement fusion can't work. Maybe.

I knew he was involved in medical research, but this is pretty awesome.

Re:Todd Rider

[fph il quozientatore]

The combination of the two fields triggers my "possible crackpot" alert. Plus the fact that googling for "Todd Rider" returns Wikipedia and pop-sci articles, but no "real" scientific publications. Can anyone in the field comment on the credibility/reputation of Dr. Rider? I don't intend to be offensive, maybe he's really a top guy in the field, it's just that both claims are quite bold and I'd be happy to get some external confirmation.

Re:Todd Rider

[ColdWetDog]

The combination of the two fields triggers my "possible crackpot" alert. Plus the fact that googling for "Todd Rider" returns Wikipedia and pop-sci articles, but no "real" scientific publications. Can anyone in the field comment on the credibility/reputation of Dr. Rider? I don't intend to be offensive, maybe he's really a top guy in the field, it's just that both claims are quite bold and I'd be happy to get some external confirmation.

Yeah, I've just skimmed it. It's plausible. There are two problems - the first is getting it into the cells. The system they used:

For delivery into cells in vitro or in vivo, DRACOs can be fused with proven protein transduction tags, including a sequence from the HIV TAT protein [28], the related protein transduction domain 4 (PTD) [29], and polyarginine

really isn't a good drug delivery system. That's the problem with a number of targeted therapies - you have to get to the target in large enough numbers to be useful medically and with an easy enough system to be useful clinically.

Secondly, what they do is to bind large double stranded RNA molecules (which, according TFA exist primarily in RNA viruses, NOT in mammalian cells) and then use part of the immune system to attack that complex.

What they DO NOT DO is show that this hybrid system would be effective in a real organism, as opposed to a petri dish. I am going to bet that once you get this puppy inside the bloodstream, all hell is going to break loose via the immune system and create a bunch of untoward side effects.

An interesting bit of research (if it can be validated), they way it is pitched in the article is way too aggressive for a scientific publication and sounds more like an investment vehicle.

Re:Todd Rider

[AmbushBug]

RTFA:

Most of the tests reported in this study were done in human and animal cells cultured in the lab, but the researchers also tested DRACO in mice infected with the H1N1 influenza virus. When mice were treated with DRACO, they were completely cured of the infection. The tests also showed that DRACO itself is not toxic to mice.

So they have tried it on a real organism. And it appears to have worked as expected (yay!).

Re:Todd Rider

[ciroknight]

What they DO NOT DO is show that this hybrid system would be effective in a real organism, as opposed to a petri dish. I am going to bet that once you get this puppy inside the bloodstream, all hell is going to break loose via the immune system and create a bunch of untoward side effects.

According to MIT's Press Release (and their published works): "Most of the tests reported in this study were done in human and animal cells cultured in the lab, but the researchers also tested DRACO in mice infected with the H1N1 influenza virus. When mice were treated with DRACO, they were completely cured of the infection. The tests also showed that DRACO itself is not toxic to mice."

This may not pan out to being the panacea promised, but it certainly does work inside of animals. There are tons of questions about how such a drug should be used if it were to become available and pass testing, whether it should be reserved for viruses that will kill you very quickly, or whether it should be prescribed to keep people missing work from a cold or flu, but the fact is, there's something worth researching here.

And it's not like MIT's not going to publish the biggest claim they possibly can to draw in as much research funding as possible for this, even if it does turn out to only be effective against a handful of virus types, or if it does just kill the host organism or a incredibly significant portion of their remaining cells, re-releasing viruses into their systems in the case of long-term virus infections such as Herpes or HIV.

Still, the researchers are right that there's not a lot of hope the viruses have resistance-wise, as there's nothing for them to actively select around. The viruses that could survive this kind of onslaught are ones that can deliver a payload while remaining an intact virus, which would require some kind of in-virus payload replication, which would make it... you know.. not a virus anymore, some kind of protobacteria. We just wonder if the host can also survive the damage wrought by this drug.

Re:Todd Rider

[JordanL]

The actual abstract very clearly states that the drug induces apoptosis, independent of the host immune system. I know we are probably all used to the pop-sci terms for drugs and the immune system, but we should have all learned about apoptosis in beginners bio.

Re:Todd Rider

[Scareduck]

Someone working for MIT, a crackpot?

Doesn't that seem a little far-fetched?

If you read his doctoral thesis, you'll understand why he changed to medical work: he believed that he had killed off his favorite short-path approach for fusion as a dead end.

Re:Todd Rider

[Michael Woodhams]

Use Google Scholar instead of plain Google. He looks to have plenty of real science to his credit. (Although I'm betting those 1930s papers were someone else...)

Re:Cure AIDS and all STDs at once?

[Sectoid_Dev]

I think it would be only fair, since I was too young to participate in all of the free sex of the 70s

Time

[xclr8r]

to call in sick and use up my sick days.

Tested on 15 Viruses ...

[angel'o'sphere]

While there are a few 10k virus forms known and the total number of "variations" goes into the dozens of millions?

Sounds like a plan for disaster and not like a cure.

Re:Tested on 15 Viruses ...

[SecurityTheatre]

It specifically targets any cell attempting to produce long, double-strand RNA. As far as I am aware, there are no natural processes other than virus production that use this particular means of genetic reproduction.

I don't think it's like antivirus on a PC....

Better watch out...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, isn't this how the zombie apocalypse is supposed to start?

Re:Better watch out...

[AK Marc]

How do I buy stock in the Umbrella Corp?

Re:too good to be allowed?

[ShavedOrangutan]

I'm sure one of the utopian countries with socialized medicine will make it work first, since nothing good can come from capitalism.

aak, sorry -- wrong parent.

[dtmos]

Mea culpa.

Re:aak, sorry -- wrong parent.

[Aighearach]

If they can just figure out a way to keep the hosts alive, that will be great! But at least with this, we can keep infections from spreading.

Re:aak, sorry -- wrong parent.

[h5inz]

"If they can just figure out a way to keep the hosts alive" -If you meant the host cells, then yes sure that would be great. In case of illness it usually dies of protein overproduction (the virus can up- or down-regulate its newly aquired war factory .. -I really like that comparison :) ) or gets killed by the host organisms immune system. There has been no other way of disinfecting a cell that has already been infected by a virus. They would have to remove the virus code (DNA or RNA) from the cells production units and ensure that the proper human DNA would be left over.

Too good to be true?

[SecurityTheatre]

This is one of those instances where I must assume that there is something that I am missing.

If not, it is one of the biggest medical findings in history... Period.

It's the "other half" to the discovery of penicillin.

Re:Too good to be true?

[ColdWetDog]

You're missing a couple of things.

1. It's not been replicated. The work was created in a lab not known for RNA molecular biology. Certainly not a show stopper, but it makes one wonder.
2. It's completely in vitro at this point. The combination of an anti DS RNA antibody hooked onto a bit of the immune system is not something that is liable to hang out benignly in the mammalian organism. It may have to be further sequestered in some sort of targeting / protection vehicle.
3. There are a number of similar concepts in molecular biology that can work well in tissue culture but fail inside an organism because we do not have good mechanisms to package up biologically active molecules and deliver them to a specific target in the body. It is an active area of research, but the clinically available systems are quite crude.
4. Even if everything does go according to plan, it only works on RNA viruses. A significant clinical burden but it's not every virus in the swamp.
5. The tone of the paper is very suspect, sounds more like a prospectus than a research paper.
6. Don't give this guy any money just yet.
7. The lead author is credited with the idea, doing the lab tests and getting the patent. Sounds weird. Maybe I'm just jealous.

Re:Too good to be true?

[JordanL]

1. You are correct. Something to consider.
2. Incorrect. The abstract clearly states that it has already been show effective in actual mice.
3. Correct. Getting it to the cells could be more complicated with certain types of infections.
4. Incorrect. The abstract clearly states that it has proven effective against dsRNA, +ssRNA, -ssRNA, and DNA viruses, because ALL OF THEM produce dsRNA within the infected cell as part of the replication process.
5. Maybe. Sounds like an opinion to me.
6. Sure, why not. You don't have to give this guy any of your money. I'm sure someone will, just to see if he uses it to buy a Ferrari.
7. I must admit that this I somewhat share. The idea is so simple that I feel a bit put-off that it wasn't obvious (if it proves effective and replicable).

read the original paper

[dizzy8578]

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572

There are no conclusions but there are patent apps everywhere in the name of the main author Todd H Rider who is no slouch as a researcher.
If it proves out it could lead to social upheaval if Sci-fi proportions far beyond cheesy movie fearmongering :)

Re:read the original paper

[MagikSlinger]

Penicillin was as revolutionary, but the social upheaval doesn't seem to have been that great even though its impact was enormous.

Re:read the original paper

[SecurityTheatre]

Upheaval? I suspect the drug is going to be inexpensive to produce, but it could probably have global changes on the same order as penicillin.

Re:read the original paper

[ColdWetDog]

Upheaval? I suspect the drug is going to be inexpensive to produce, but it could probably have global changes on the same order as penicillin.

You would be quite incorrect. It is a very complicated structure and needs a complicated delivery system. It will NOT be cheap.

Re:read the original paper

[geekoid]

Social upheaval from penicillin was very dramatic,and it's result are felt economically over time can not be over estimated.

Re:read the original paper

[MagikSlinger]

How so? I can't think of anything I could point to as social upheaval from the advent of penicillin. Without a doubt the global population is some chunk (maybe +1 billion?) larger because of it.

Re:Cure AIDS and all STDs at once?

[hawkeyeMI]

There are plenty of bacterial STDs.

Re:I am Legend?

[Daniel_Staal]

Both of those already exist. HIV in particular does both.

AIDS???

[Grimmreaper74]

What about the AIDS virus?

Side effects ?

[Alain Williams]

Given that some 8% of the human genome is from retroviruses, some of which may be expressed in some way, perhaps not all the time, -- with good or bad consequences, what side effects may we expect if this 8% causes some cells to be identified as infected? Could it result in huge cell death ?

Re:Side effects ?

[ceoyoyo]

Read the article. The RNA the drug targets is only found in virus infected cells. Either the viral components of our DNA are not expressed or do not cause the cell to produce the right RNA. They tested their drug against non-infected human cells as well as mice, which have similar viral sequences in their DNA.

Re:I am Legend?

[SecurityTheatre]

Yeah, that sounds a lot like HIV.

But to be fair, this drug will only handle certain types of viruses (specifically long double-stranded RNA viruses). Fortunately, many of the nasty ones are of this type.

Is life considered a virus?

[JustAnotherIdiot]

I don't want it curing me of life, i quite enjoy this disease.

"Type of RNA only produced by infected cells"

[Arancaytar]

If there were even a tiny fraction of exceptions, things would get very ugly...

Abstract from PLoS One

[pz]

Here's the abstract of the paper. Note that the summary forgot to mention that the drug has been tested in normal cell lines as well. Also not mentioned is that all of this testing in live animals (not the cell lines) has been in mice and lots and lots of things go wrong when taking a drug developed in a mouse model to humans. It helps a lot that some of the normal cell lines shown to be unaffected were human.

Currently there are relatively few antiviral therapeutics, and most which do exist are highly pathogen-specific or have other disadvantages. We have developed a new broad-spectrum antiviral approach, dubbed Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer (DRACO) that selectively induces apoptosis in cells containing viral dsRNA, rapidly killing infected cells without harming uninfected cells. We have created DRACOs and shown that they are nontoxic in 11 mammalian cell types and effective against 15 different viruses, including dengue flavivirus, Amapari and Tacaribe arenaviruses, Guama bunyavirus, and H1N1 influenza. We have also demonstrated that DRACOs can rescue mice challenged with H1N1 influenza. DRACOs have the potential to be effective therapeutics or prophylactics for numerous clinical and priority viruses, due to the broad-spectrum sensitivity of the dsRNA detection domain, the potent activity of the apoptosis induction domain, and the novel direct linkage between the two which viruses have never encountered.

As some posters suggested, there might be problems with herpes-style infections where the virus has infected nerve cells and gone dormant. The authors did not mention this in the paper as far as I could tell.

Re:Abstract from PLoS One

[h4rr4r]

Too bad none of this rodent medicine that does not work on humans is never sold to pet owners.

Re:Abstract from PLoS One

[ceoyoyo]

I think when your mouse gets sick you just get a new mouse.

Re:Abstract from PLoS One

[h4rr4r]

You're wrong. People spend lots of money on the healthcare of mice and rats. I have spent money on healthcare for rats. They make great pets and if they lived more than 2.5 years max they would be near perfect small pets.

Re:Abstract from PLoS One

[ceoyoyo]

If you want to spend money on rodent health care, go for it. I strongly suspect you are a VERY niche market and so giving your rat drugs that had failed human trials would be exorbitantly expensive. Expensive in a way that would make human drugs look cheap.

Unfortunately...

[Ranzear]

It will never see the counter or even a perscription pad, because treating makes more money than curing.

I thought humans were mostly virus, countwise

[peter303]

The rule-of-thumb is for every human cell there are 10 bacteria and 100 viruses living together in [ mostly ] symbiotic harmony. But bulkwise, due to miniscule size of these symbiots, bacteria only occupy a couple percent of weight and viruses a fraction of a percent. A tiny minority go berserk or are foreign invaders, thus cause some diseases.

The question is how does medicine distinguish the between the useful viruses and bad viruses?

Re:I thought humans were mostly virus, countwise

[ceoyoyo]

I don't know where you got your figures from, but active viruses are very uncommon in the human body. There aren't any known which are beneficial to us. Many of us carry dormant dormant viruses (herpes simplex for example, or chicken pox), but these aren't actively reproducing and so wouldn't be targets for this drug. It only attacks cells that are actively producing viruses (and so are pretty useless to you anyway).

Re:I am Legend?

[vlm]

Both of those already exist. HIV in particular does both.

Yes that's exactly the point. Just like its no problem for healthy normal humans if 0.001% of staph bacteria are antibiotic resistant... The problem is when you kill ALL the other staph bacteria so the population becomes 100% antibiotic resistant. Then you got a big problem, especially if that resistance cross pollinates into other bacteria.

So if you wipe almost all viruses off the face of the earth except HIV, then pretty much all viruses, are going to take on the characteristics of HIV. Including the common cold. Then we're pretty much screwed.

Re:I am Legend?

[xevioso]

I would be interested if the cure described has the side effect of turning people into Pirate Ninjas.

yeah wait

[WillgasM]

So this one drug finds ANY cell infected with ANY virus and kills it? That sounds dangerous as hell. Aren't viral infections partially responsible for genetic mutations vital to evolution. I don't know of any specific examples in our own genome; but isn't bee venom, for instance, derived partially from bits of genetic code from a virus. Who knows what leaps in evolution were fueled by snippets of viral DNA being incorporated with its hosts'. I think I'd like more information on this specific type of RNA that it targets. I smell a zombie apocalypse coming on.

But where does that leave our immune systems?

[PCM2]

I wonder, though, where a treatment like this leaves the human immune system.

A vaccine spurs the immune system to generate antibodies, so that when we're actually infected by the virus, the antibodies are available to combat it. Our own immune systems do all the work.

This new type of treatment, however, kills off the cells that have been infected by viruses, so the viruses aren't able to use the cell's materials to replicate. As the cells die, so do the viruses. From the sound of it, the treatment achieves this without any assistance from the immune system.

So to put it bluntly, in a world where everybody pops a few anti-flu pills every time they get a little sniffle, what does the human immune system do all day? I can see two possible outcomes:

1. 1. Humans mature with improperly-tuned immune systems that overreact to fairly minor variations, resulting in an increased instance of allergies and autoimmune diseases. (We seem to already be seeing some of this now, with the overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobial agents in soaps etc.)
2. 2. If the side effects of #1 are sufficiently bad for humans, it seems logical that over time, nature will select for people who have weaker overall immune systems. Can that be good?

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[RCC42]

I suspect that there would be enough viral debris and intact viruses that an immune system would be able to at least notice something was happening.

DRACO doesn't kill the virus, it kills the cells that are incubating the virus. So there would be 'free floating' and live viruses that your immune system would deal with.

The main reason viruses screw with us is because our immune system can't see them inside our own cells, those cells make a bunch of viruses and then release them to infect others. Our immune systems only have a small window of time to catch the viruses before they find a new cell and hide again.

AFAIK the only way the body can cure a virus once it goes totally rampant inside of your cells is to overheat to the point that it doesn't kill you but it kills the virus (Fever) since your immune system can't contain the viral load anymore and are simply outnumbered. The reason vaccines work and how you can catch, recover and then be immune to a virus is because the virus never gets to the 'rampant' stage, it's noticed and killed immediately by the immune system while your immune system outnumbers it millions to one.

So to answer your original question: This can only be an incredibly good thing if it works as advertised.

p.s. Many vaccines work by injecting DEAD viruses into you. Your immune system sees them and does its thing, pumping out antibodies as if it were a real threat - once that's done you're effectively immune until the antibodies die out but even then, afaik, there's still some lingering defence.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[PCM2]

So there would be 'free floating' and live viruses that your immune system would deal with.

Not really. A virus enters a cell, uses cell material to replicate, then the replicated viruses leave the cell in search of new cells to infect. Kill the cell, kill the virus, no replication, no more free-floating virus. This treatment could work very, very quickly.

AFAIK the only way the body can cure a virus once it goes totally rampant inside of your cells is to overheat to the point that it doesn't kill you but it kills the virus (Fever)

Nobody really knows the reason for fever. It might have that effect, but it's unlikely, because (for example) you need to heat water all the way to boiling for it to be effective in sterilizing medical equipment. The increased heat may increase the rate of certain chemical reactions, however. It's also possible that the purpose of fever is simply to disable you, so your body can concentrate on fighting the infection.

Neither do most viruses go "totally rampant," so I don't know why you mention it. TFA talks about this drug being used to treat influenza and the common cold. When is the last time a common cold virus went "totally rampant" in your body?

So to answer your original question: This can only be an incredibly good thing if it works as advertised.

On what do you base that? True, any miracle cure would be a good thing if it worked as advertised. But none of your statements about vaccines and antibodies answers the question of what happens when we don't rely on antibodies to cure vaccines, but instead take a medicine that interrupts the virus replication cycle. If we never allow a virus to take hold in our bodies long enough to require a full immune response, do we not risk maturing with untrained immune systems that attack our own bodies in the absence of pathogens?

On the other hand, now that I think about it, such a treatment really could be a miracle cure for HIV/AIDS patients and others with compromised immune systems, for whom an influenza infection really can be a huge deal.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[Antony-Kyre]

I thought the fever was to slow down the replication of the virus. Hence taking medicine to lower one's fever helps the virus replicate faster. Although, if the fever is high enough, there's danger in and of itself.

I am not a doctor or medical student.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[robotkid]

I wonder, though, where a treatment like this leaves the human immune system.

A vaccine spurs the immune system to generate antibodies, so that when we're actually infected by the virus, the antibodies are available to combat it. Our own immune systems do all the work.

This new type of treatment, however, kills off the cells that have been infected by viruses, so the viruses aren't able to use the cell's materials to replicate. As the cells die, so do the viruses. From the sound of it, the treatment achieves this without any assistance from the immune system.

>

It's been noted by other posters, but this treatment is just amping up what the cell would normally do if it detected a viral infection, that is, kill itself to save the host. It turns out most successful viruses have evolved a way to shut off this response, and this treatment is like adding a redundant way to activate it. That's not to say it couldn't backfire, most of these self-destruct pathways need to be activated by multiple inputs to avoid accidental triggering (just like needing two special keys to be pressed at once to launch a nuke), and now it's replaced by one giant shiny red button.

As for weakening our immune system, I should add It's a common misconception that the adaptive immune system provides the bulk of our body's defense from invasions (i.e. the one that can "learn" from vaccinations and infections). In fact the first line of defense is the innate immune system which is what is protecting us 99% of the time, and the naturally occurring suicide pathways alluded to before (apoptosis) are a last-line of defense - neither of these are systems with any capability to "learn" from an infection and therefore they won't get weaker just because we use them less should such treatments prove effective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immune_system

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[PCM2]

I thought the fever was to slow down the replication of the virus

Haven't heard that one, though it's possible. It's also possible that the higher-heat environment is more favorable for white blood cell production, which has the same effect because white cells attack the virus. There are a bunch of theories.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[GryMor]

It's possible, going by the mechanism being used, that it turns every viral infection you get while on it into the equivalent of a (possibly weak) deactivated virus vaccine. In fact, if it didn't, it probably wouldn't work at all, as it's unlikely it can kill all the infected cells before they have done any viral replication work.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[bferlin]

I imagine that is only if people used this kind of thing for every little sniffle. I will admit, I also dislike the 'pop a pill' mentality of today's medicine. I feel that too many people just take what they're given blindly, and could be trading side-effect after side effect in a never ending whirlwind of treatments prescribed by a drug company stooge doctor. That's not to say they are all that way, but it's definitely out there.

I think, (though I could be wrong) that this treatment is really meant for (and more interesting for) viruses that are too tricky for our immune system - such as ones that hide inside cells that the immune system can't touch. This could finally make some of the worst untouchable diseases finally exposed to treatment. The downside in my view is, some of these viruses hide in places where when you are forced to kill cells that won't/can't regenerate. Which could suck for nerves, bone marrow etc.

But if you have HIV or something, I imagine trading a bone marrow transplant for taking a cocktail of drugs to keep yourself from wasting away is an easy decision.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[farbles]

2. If the side effects of #1 are sufficiently bad for humans, it seems logical that over time, nature will select for people who have weaker overall immune systems. Can that be good?

Well, for better or worse, we're already affecting our evolution. If you're under the age of 35, you've never been vaccinated for smallpox, you've not encountered that virus so whatever immunity you have to the disease is residual from your ancestry, which had no choice but to select for smallpox resistance. All out the window now; you and your kids will have no need for such selection. And genes being the complicated little things they are, this may in turn have other seemingly unrelated consequences.

A percentage of our genetic makeup comes from viruses we've interacted with over time. By bathing, building sewers, refrigerating our food, using condoms, etc. we deliberately minimize our exposure to viruses. We're altering the course of our destiny. Good or bad, that's the road we're on. Actions have consequences and only time can tell if removing a source of genetic change (albeit one with frequently horrific consequences of its own) will pay off or not.

I hope so. I like people who wash themselves and don't poo on the rug and I'd like to think future humankind can get behind that sentiment too.

.

Re:But where does that leave our immune systems?

[ElusiveJoe]

it seems logical that over time, nature will select for people who have weaker overall immune systems. Can that be good?

C'mon, by that time we will be landing on other planets in our tri-pods. What bad can happen?

What about nerve cells?

[ilsaloving]

Considering that there are some viruses that like nerve cells (eg: herpes), wouldn't it be a problem if said cells killed themselves? Having your CNS self destruct would ruin your day...

It has a super-cool name.

[xevioso]

Kids! Have a cold? Take your Draco! Draco pills for everyone! Seriously, I'd be so happy to finally have a medicine with a cool name. Named after a Dragon. They could not have come up with a cooler acronym.

DNA Viruses

[Craig Milo Rogers]

There are certain viruses that contain DNA, such as the ones that cause herpes. Although some of these replicate via a DNA-RNA-DNA path, others, I believe, replicate their DNA directly. Thus, these viruses would not be affected by the new treatment.

Hmm... this may not bode well

[catmistake]

for Windows Administrators... next to "it's just broken," that's the other half of the built-in job security

HIV

[gubers33]

Why wouldn't you try it on the Virus that kills the most people and that you can make the most money off of?

Re:HIV

[ScentCone]

Why wouldn't you try it on the Virus that kills the most people and that you can make the most money off of?

Because, if you knew anything about the topic on which you're delivering a whiny, uninformed, Eeeeeevil Business hate people rant you'd know that: HIV is a different class of virus that doesn't work in the same way as those that are being discussed, here. Read up on the "D" in the "DRACO" acronym in the article. That is, if you can take some time away from bitching about fictional things.

Re:HIV

[ceoyoyo]

Bone marrow is highly vascular. It's not a problem getting a drug into it.

Moderators: Please mod down.

[digitalderbs]

This is not correct. HIV, like the flu virus, has a single-stranded RNA genome that forms long helical, double stranded RNA structures which could be inhibited by this drug (DRACOs). See table 1 from the article, and my previous post

Kills the infected cell...

[Cyclloid]

I don't know about cell infection rates of viruses but I worry about a drug that can kill off your own cells.
For instance: a virus(or multiple viruses) has infected 50% of you cells. Your cells continue to work normally for the most part(after all viruses use the normal cell operations to replicate). Then you take DRACO, your infected cells die within 24hrs. Again 50% infected cell is likely high(?). Do you think that you would feel an effect if 20% were infected? 10%?

As far as the detection of the viruses. They use a method of causing the cell to die when it detects long dsRNA(don't know what the ds stands for, wasn't covered in my high school science class) with strands >30 base pairs(They note that mammal cells generally don't produce dsRNA strands longer than 21~23 base pairs). So since viruses which contain only RNA get killed(along with the cell they infect). Though this leads to the possibility of viruses that have shorter RNA strands appearing(maybe?) or viruses that generate a blocking mechanism that prevents the collapse of the cell.

Re:Kills the infected cell...

[Eskarel]

Cells being used for viral replication do not continue to work normally, at least not in the long term.

The viral replication method involves breaking into cells, hijacking the cell's replication mechanisms to produce viruses instead stuff the cell actually wants to produce. The replicated viruses then fill the cell until it bursts.

Yes, some viruses take an awful long time to do this, but they all do this in the end. A cell infected with an actively replicating virus is doomed.

Published in PLoS One???

[Fished]

Call me when it's been published in NEJM, or JAMA or The Lancet. PLoS ONE is peer reviewed, kind of, but it's an "open access journal" and not exactly where you'd look for something of this magnitude. I'd imagine there are some serious problems if they couldn't get it published in one of the mainstream journals.

Re:Published in PLoS One???

[OG]

PLoS ONE has a high impact factor, and it's gotten there very quickly. In one year it jumped from #25 to #12 in biology journals. And some people publish there because they prefer its business model and want to support openness.

Re:Published in PLoS One???

[BajTaur]

Oh come on... PLoS ONE peer review is as good as anywhere else (which sadly is still pretty bad). The only thing odd about PLoS ONE is the don't really filter based on impact or field. Also, plenty of quality journals are open access (Lancet), delayed open access (NEJM) or allow authors to pay for the privilege of their paper being freely available. I don't see how that casts the veracity of the article into doubt. That said, I agree, the fact that a paper the purports to be so ground breaking was submitted to a fairly low impact journal is a little fishy. It seems a bit premature for NEJM, JAMA, or Lancet given that the work was with mouse cancer lines and lung fibroblasts (possibly others), but I would have expected Science, Nature or Cell. I read through the paper and it seems decently solid, they do seem to have a bit of toxicity and the cells were pretreated with the drug in a bunch of the graphs so the data doesn't really represent a viral 'cure'. Did anyone notice anything else that might have caused them to aim low?

Re:Published in PLoS One???

[blardle]

Call me when it's been published in NEJM, or JAMA or The Lancet. PLoS ONE is peer reviewed, kind of, but it's an "open access journal" and not exactly where you'd look for something of this magnitude. I'd imagine there are some serious problems if they couldn't get it published in one of the mainstream journals.

PLoS One only ignores the potential impact of an article when considering merit. All other peer-review processes apply. Also, as most slashdot readers would agree, "open access" makes things better not worse!

Re:Published in PLoS One???

[Void_Ptr]

Oh, please. Open Access just means they don't have the same subscription model, so anyone can read the whole article. PloS One is a highly respected journal, and exactly where one could expect to see something like this.

Simple Ingredient

[TechieRefugee]

It's just a simple little ingredient called sulfuric acid. Yeah, sure, it has the side effect of potentially killing you, but man oh man does it cure those diseases!

Mod this up!!!

[Xaedalus]

He's not flaming! Well... he IS, but being gay's okay! Nah, he's actually talking about the attitudes young people had back in the 60's and 70's

It's a protein drug - delivery is the real issue

[svara]

Disclaimer: I am a biologist, if not working in virology or molecular biology. I actually read the paper.

The findings that the group reports are very interesting - based on the Slashdot headline you wouldn't believe it, but it's actually legit science.

However, there's a big caveat. This drug is a protein, which is a very large molecule. Almost all currently marketed drugs are small molecules, which is a huge difference to the body. You will never be able to administer this drug orally, as to the body it is "food" and will be degraded in the stomach. If you inject it, cells will not take it up and it will not be effective. This is why they attached sequences to the protein that make transduction (crossing of cell membranes into cells) possible. These sequences come from somewhat "dodgy" sources. One of them is actually a part of HIV. It is completely unclear how the body will react to that. The construct might, for example, trigger an intense immune response.

That said, I am delighted to see this kind of work published. Basically, people are reaping the fruits of decades of basic research in molecular biology to design drugs that can be "programmed" to do whatever you want. If the technical limitations can be overcome (that is, once proteins can be delivered to cells very specifically and non-invasively and once the cell killing mechanism can be made super specific), great innovations in medicine will become possible.

Re:It's a protein drug - delivery is the real issu

[Ant P.]

One of them is actually a part of HIV.

So wait, this is a Sexually-Transmitted Medication?

Why the hell are they telling us then?!

Cancer treatment?

[JSBiff]

I wonder if they could find/modify a basically harmless virus to "seek out" cancer cells, to act as 'markers', then use this drug to selectively destroy the cancer cells (having been infected by the cancer-seeking virus), while leaving non-cancer cells alone?

Re:Cancer treatment?

[Beardydog]

I'm half-a-retard, so take this with a grain of retard: This drug, after identifying infected cells, uses their own apoptosis (cellular suicide) mechisms against them. I think apoptosis is usually broken in cancer cells, which is part of what makes them cancerous. So they would be identified, but not killed.

Re:Cancer treatment?

[ceoyoyo]

When a cell is infected by a virus and hijacked to produce more virus (which is when this drug is effective) that cell's days are usually numbered anyway. Yes, people are investigating using viruses that selectively infect cancer cells. You wouldn't need to use this drug in combination though.

Re:I am Legend?

[JordanL]

I wonder if Slashdot ever posted a headline with something like "Removing Lungs Prevents Lung Cancer" commenters would reply with "until we evolve a way to do it without lungs!"

This attacks the molecular things that are necessary for viruses to do the things that make them viruses. A virus could minimize the time that it does it in, or evolve a way to "signal" a mass production, but those are about the only ways it's even physically possible for viruses to deal with this kind of treatment. HIV already has minimized both of those about as far as we've ever seen any virus do it.

The best way a virus could prevent us form using this as an effective cure would be to cycle between periods of massive, almost indescriminate infection, and then all replicating using the dsRNA pathways at the same time, which would require some kind of chemical marker to signal the infected cells, and would require that our normal immune system would be unable to correctly deal with it. HIV does not do this, or at least, not in this way. HIV also selectively infects a body system that is difficult to live without, but rebuilds given the time, and can be compensated for by proper medical care (such as a clean room).

It's unlikely that viruses of any kind will ever improve their ability to deal with this treatment vector. It's also unlikely that all viruses will be completely shut down by this process, but all of them should be impeded fairly dramatically.

Re:I am Legend?

[AK Marc]

Knowledge on the evolution of viruses is nearly non existent. The selection of bacteria is well documented, but it's presumed that there was no evolution, but that drug resistant strains pre-dated the drugs, and the drugs killed the "normal" ones, allowing the resistant strains to grow unimpeded.

Re:Fishy smell

[calmofthestorm]

It's possible they wanted to get primacy fast and, knowing how good their work was, weren't concerned about the venue. Or perhaps the journal had favorable IP policy. Or maybe their methodology is crap but they "just know" it works, and this is a gambit to get primacy while they have time to nail down real results. Maybe they care a great deal about open access and know that with work like this they can get away with publishing anywhere. Or maybe it has a favorable submission deadline (primacy). Personally I'd publish on arXiv and then apply to a prestigious journal if I had results as good as they claim, but I don't know the customs of their field.

Or maybe they're crackpots. That said, LL is very well respected in scientific circles so I doubt they'd hire this guy if he weren't at least somewhat legit. The advocacy-style of writing and working in multiple fields is a bit unusual, but the very top scientists do tend to be active in more than one field (Feynman, for example).

Big deal...

[jonwil]

I have learned to ignore anything about new medical discoveries until the drug in question is available from my local doctor, hospital or chemist.

Just because "drug x" does good things in rats or labs or even monkey/human trials doesn't mean its going to be available for normal people any time soon, if ever (think about all the instances where a promising drug came about and then never made it to market because of side effects)

HIV

[umask077]

So being the virus replicates in cells this med could eradicate infected cells. How does it penetrate the bone marrow is the real question. Since you can remove all the virus by preventing it from breed which is done in existing medicine it continues to exist in the bone marrow. One person has been cured by a complete bone marrow transplant but that is not simple, cheap, and it is far from painless. Would be interesting to know if this has any effect on the marrow as all.

Bacteria have had a lot longer to evolve than we..

[dakameleon]

The current method to prevent this adaption is giving "cocktails" of several different kinds of drugs, that have different ways of killing viruses/bacteria. The idea being that a single bacteria in the presence of say, three different drugs, will have to randomly mutate a resistance to all three, on the same roll of the dice. The odds of this are a great deal lower, and help offset the short life cycle advantage. But lets face it, eventually it will happen, and when it does, if we don't find a way to eradicate it immediately, we're screwed, because now we have a bug in the wild that we have no way to kill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drug_resistance

Google "Typhoid Mary".

[macsuibhne]

This doesn't happen in countries with universal medicine. Don't get me started on routine feedlot medication.

Tony.

Re:Google "Typhoid Mary".

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Oh you wanna bet? Japan and Taiwan have universal medicine and they also hand out antibiotics for the common cold. And as far as my experience goes, you never get ONE medicine, you get about FIVE. And most of those are medicines that are for the purpose of treating the symptom, not the underlying cause.

Re:Sounds Fishy

[Culture20]

Could a person survive if all cells containing a virus were killed off suddenly? Could a very small dose kill off some of the diseases while not overlaoding the person with dead cells?

I suppose the question is how quickly do the viruses kill off cells on their own. If it's essentially the same rate, then it's better to kill the cells with the drug.

This means only one thing..

[formfeed]

... even cheaper meat!

Long version:

1. Add it to animal feed.
2. Feed meat to people.
3. Cover up.
4. Profit

We do that here in the US

[rsilvergun]

hand out antibiotics for colds that is. Plus we get another fun side effect of private medicine: people hoarding their antibiotics. Just about every poor person I know stops taking their antibiotics as soon as they feel better. Conventional wisdom says they just forgot. They didn't. They're saving them for the next time they (or their family) get sick because they can't afford the co pay to see a doctor & get a prescription (or they can't afford the time off, you can't take FMLA an infection). So as soon as they feel OK they stop taking the pills, and instead of the bacteria being wiped out they grow back stronger. Viva la private medicine!

Re:We do that here in the US

[DryGrian]

You can buy antibiotics intended for fish or cattle that are exactly the same medication at the same dosage as is prescribed by a doctor. There's no need to hoard them and be a Petri dish for MRSA. When I or a family member have an obvious bacterial infection (abcess, etc) I save money on the doctor and purchase off-the-shelf antibiotics from a feed store and take them 3x a day for 10 days, even if I feel better and the infection is completely gone after 3 days.

I hear the hospital is a great place to contract MRSA in the first place.

Re:We do that here in the US

[macsuibhne]

While I commend your initiative, taking horse pills tends not to happen in countries with state sponsored healthcare either. Even if the doctors do prescribe antibiotics for viral infections *cough* France *cough*.

Tony.

Re:I am Legend?

[Eskarel]

There's also the slight side not that viruses with extremely high and fast fatality rates are actually selected against biologically because the host doesn't survive long enough to spread the infection.

A virus which behaved in this way would likely kill the host before the resulting clones of itself could be spread.

you never forget this

[kentsex]

Sounds promising,but what if all of your cells are infected? or 80%? or 50%? or 20%? Could the cure be worse than the disease? “The good news is that we killed off the virus that was making you sick. The bad news is that we killed you too”.

Re:I am Legend?

[mjwx]

The only nasty side effect that might take place is a huge leap in the evolution of viruses. The stuff that does survive will be some extremely nasty sci-fi shit, including, I wouldn't be surprised, viruses that "hold the body hostage" by infecting critical cells and the biological equivalent of polymorphic viruses.

Which will then zombify people.

Adenoviruses

[ThatsNotPudding]

Aren't these harmless viruses being used to transport treatments to target sites such as cancer? Maybe just proposed, I can't recall, but it seems like this drug could wipe out this form of treatment entirely. This could be a massive breakthrough drug, but it could also be the Mother of all Unintended Consequences. Genies out of the bottle very soon, I bet - at least for the very rich and powerful. Though it would be sublime karmic justice if they were the first to find out about the side effects.

Re:Adenoviruses

[rgviza]

don't hate the player, hate the game.

Side effects?

[darkonc]

If you have an endemic virus like, say, hepatitis, could it make your kidney explode? Even otherwise harmless viruses that are endemic to a critical system could cause fatal side effects.

As lon as

[hesaigo999ca]

As long as the amount of cells is not too great, ....imagine if you had a viral infection on 50% of your cells....you would lose half your cells, and weight?

Re:high entropy anyone?

[AK Marc]

Have you never heard of drug trials? You have those first. If there are side effects, you eliminate if possible, mitigate where appropriate, and make a risk analysis.

Triffids

[Msdose]

Once we get rid of the viruses, the world will be safe for Triffids.