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Researchers Successfully Cut HIV DNA Out of Human Cells
mrspoonsi sends word that researchers from Temple University have managed to eliminate the HIV-1 virus from human cells for the first time. "When deployed, a combination of a DNA-snipping enzyme called a nuclease and a targeting strand of RNA called a guide RNA (gRNA) hunt down the viral genome and excise the HIV-1 DNA (abstract). From there, the cell's gene repair machinery takes over, soldering the loose ends of the genome back together – resulting in virus-free cells." While antiretroviral therapy can treat people who are infected with HIV, the immune system is incapable of actually removing the virus, so this is an important step in fighting it. The researchers still have to overcome the problem of delivering the the genetic "toolkit" to each affected cell in a patient's body, and also HIV's high mutation rate.
From TFA:
"...soldering the loose ends of the genome back together..."
I sure hope they used RoHS solder (aka sodder for the US people). Lead is toxic to cells.
You also left out people who were raped, and a fair number of hospital staff. Not to mention, that if you forcibly relocate people, they are going to be even less honest about having HIV, which means more people will catch it and possibly spread it before they find out they have it.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Why can't we quarantine these morons like we used to do with other diseases?
Because liberals are too nice to force people to spend the rest of their lives in isolation for getting some disease.
And because conservatives are too cheap to pay for it.
As demonstrated by our victory in the war on drugs, clearly we can just step up enforcement to solve the problem!
"The researchers still have to overcome the problem of delivering the the genetic "toolkit" to each affected cell in a patient's body"
Solution: Use the HIV virus itself
http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/2014/20140626torbett.html
"Viruses infect the body by inserting their own genetic material into human cells. In gene therapy, however, scientists have developed “gutted” viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), to produce what are called “viral vectors.” Viral vectors carry therapeutic genes into cells without causing viral disease. Torbett and other scientists have shown that HIV vectors can deliver genes to blood stem cells."
The irony in this solution would be over 9000.
We don't need it if we would quarantine the people that decided to get this virus. Other than a very few people that got it from blood transfusions in the 80's, nearly all of the people with it got it from something they intentionally did. Why can't we quarantine these morons like we used to do with other diseases? Why is GRIDS so different that we can't protect the public from these people? They've proven they'll intentionally spread it, or it would have died-out over twenty years ago. Instead, we let these people keep spreading it.
The majority of cases I know of these days are:
Needle sharing with an HIV carrier
Women who are victims of rape
Men who raped women who were previously victims of rape
Children who were born with it.
Most of the cases are in Africa.
The other issue is that testing is fully voluntary, and HIV can be dormant. Tracking the spread and infection of HIV/AIDS is inherently difficult as well, because along with discovery being voluntary, the people who have it also hear the "nearly all of the people with it got it from something they intentionally did" line. So they're not likely to admit to having intentionally done something if they can avoid it.
Compare that to SARS, where the victims could be anyone, West Nile, where prior to it going epidemic, the majority of victims were on cruise ships, or MMR, where the victims of those diseases are mostly children. Then there's Polio which is no longer eradicated, and Smallpox, which isn't much compared to the flu strains our bodies have to deal with on a regular basis these days.
Disease eradication, prevention and management is tricky. Isolating HIV carriers will prove trickier than convincing people to do annual inoculations for common viruses for which herd protection could easily wipe out the viruses in short order.
What worries me more is the HIV variant that subverts the gene therapy discussed here, creating a new immunovirus that can slice and dice our genes however it likes.
Can you not see that this research is directly applicable? Arguably cancer can be considered a copy error (wouldn't it be nice if our DNA had CRC?) If you think about it like that it seems that you could replace the error bits in just this fashion, and voilla.. Cancers ( all of them, as well as a shitload of other genetic issues ) are a memory.. Now where the hell do we put all the people?
"A mind reader? That sounds like sci fi." "Honey, we live on a space ship"
Here is probably the biggest difference in terms of a drug-development perspective: HIV relies on enzymes that are not normally found in the human body, so it is relatively easy to find drugs that can target these proteins without causing significant side effects. Cancer cells, however, are human cells themselves, so the proteins that drive tumor growth and malignancy are found in healthy cells as well. Thus, developing anti-cancer drugs is not just a matter of finding and inactivating the proteins that drive cancers, but also making sure that inactivating these targets does not harm other non-cancerous cells in the body.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/17/1405186111.abstract
This isn't such a big deal. Cas9/CRISPR is being used for all sorts of applications. This is just one of them, and the actual challenge isn't editing the genome, it is delivering Cas9/CRISPR to all cells of the body and having them being specific. That is far, far more difficult.
The authors detected INDELS (insertion/deletions) within the HIV-1 targetted sequence, so that is good -- it's doing what it should be in that respect.
However, Cas9/CRISPR can go OT (off target) and edit non-targetted DNA. It is the most specific editing tool that anybody has ever found, and will no doubt be Nobel-Prize worthy one day. But if OT effects happen, this is bad, when you start deleting/editing bits of DNA randomly - things can go wrong, cells and tissues can do things they're not meant to. Although that is fairly rare with Cas9/CRISPR -- however when exposed to megabases of DNA even rare events can become frequent (I would consider 1 OT effect too many for me, if I was about to be injected with something that was going to edit my Genome).
The authors did detect some OT effects (from their paper published in PNAS). So they carefully use the phrasing "minimize" OT effects in their paper. Also, they say "The long-term expression of Cas9/LTR-A/B gRNAs did not adversely affect cell growth or viability, suggesting a low occurrence of off-target interference with the host genome or Cas9-induced toxicity in this model." while it's a golf-clap worthy assay for cells in a dish (where's the rest of the assays for motility, cilial function, cell cycle length, etc.?), that isn't good enough either when uttering the words 'therapy'.
It's kind of neat, but I can see why this is PNAS and not Nature or Nat Med.
The troll is strong with this one.