Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Block HIV Infection In Monkeys With Artificial Protein
An anonymous reader writes: Immunologists have developed a synthetic molecule that's able to attach to HIV and prevent it from interacting with healthy cells. "HIV infects white blood cells by sequentially attaching to two receptors on their surfaces. First, HIV's own surface protein, gp120, docks on the cell's CD4 receptor. This attachment twists gp120 such that it exposes a region on the virus that can attach to the second cellular receptor, CCR5. The new construct combines a piece of CD4 with a smidgen of CCR5 and attaches both receptors to a piece of an antibody. In essence, the AIDS virus locks onto the construct, dubbed eCD4-Ig, as though it were attaching to a cell and thus is neutralized." The new compound was tested in monkeys. After successively higher injections of HIV, all four monkeys who received the compound beforehand stayed from free infection. Any potential medical treatment is still a ways off — the researchers plan more trials in monkeys before involving humans in the testing.
I just wish half as much effort had been put into fighting cancer as has been put into fighting AIDS over the last three decades.
And what exactly makes you think that is NOT the case? Oh, wait, I see, you're a homophobic idiot who just assumes that because you see actors on TV talking about AIDS, that somehow there's no money being spent on cancer research anymore. You really could not be more wrong if you tried.
AIDS is a lot easier to beat than cancer, because cancer is actually a whole range of conditions that are caused by different things and need different treatments.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yep, while AIDS is preventable; it still kills a huge number of people in Africa. In the grand scheme of things AIDS deaths in the west are a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Should research not be done in an effort to help that situation, just because some gays in the west die from the same diesease?
Blind, or evil -- take your pick.
The biggest contribution from the massive levels of research on AIDS is not curing the disease. That will be wonderful when, and if, it happens. The biggest contribution will be that, as a result of trying to cure AIDS, we have learned immense, really truly immense, amounts about the immune system and it's incredible intricacies.
And, guess what? Ultimately, it is the immune system that keeps your body free of cancer. Cancers happen frequently in your body, and the immune system beats them down. When it fails at that for some reason, only then does clinical disease happen. I've heard it said that most people have 6 or so small cancers in their bodies at any given time, all being properly managed by the immune system.
Understanding the immune system, because we have been trying to cure a disease of the immune system, will eventually do more good for human health than any other single effort since the invention of antibiotics, with the possible exception of magnetic resonance imaging.
But let's look at the GP's assertion about money. The National Cancer Institute's budget appropriation for FY15 was $4.9B. They're the part of the NIH that sponsors cancer research. The National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, the NIH that is charged with fighting AIDS, had $4.3B appropriated for FY15. Even if we assumed that the entire NIAID budget went to AIDS (and it does not), the NCI has a bigger budget. So the GP is just flat out wrong with his initial assertion: much less research effort in the form of NIH extramural support is spent on AIDS than on cancer.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.