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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.
You've no idea what a pain it is to get a monkey to use a condom.
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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This type of compounds (HIV fusion inhibitors) is already well known and available on the market e.g. Enfuvirtide
The only hope here is that this inhibitor will be cheaper and perform better in humans than already available ones. However, according to FA, these type of experiments are still way off..
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.
What a troll... Who cares?
Look, I don't care what the Hollywood elites want to throw their PR machines onto, it's usually bogus from them anyway. For the most part it's about the show, the PR the "look at me!" mind set with them. If their efforts manage to actually *help* somebody, I'm totally happy for everybody involved, knock yourselves out, raise money enjoying rubber chicken at $10,000/plate or recording PSA's for free.
Just remember that all this hoopla is only really about 2 things. 1. Public Relations and keeping your face in front of the paps so your photo shows up more often to keep your prospective fan base alive between your actual paying gigs... 2. For some, a secondary point is to assuage their feelings of guilt for being so affluent and living in such opulent surroundings. They tell themselves they ARE good people, after all they did all this AIDS/Cancer/Feed the Children/SPCA and PETA stuff for free..
Be happy anytime good comes out of something and stop complaining that their issue of the day is the wrong one in your eyes. Be happy even if their motives for doing good are no good. Just be happy that good is being done and let the rest go. Then go out and do what YOU think is right...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
More recent HIV treatments target portions of the virus that mutate slowly, and are moreover unlikely to be able to mutate more quickly. These have significantly higher chances of being a "cure" compared to the older cocktails to which you refer. Unfortunately it did take 20 years of AIDs research to figure this out and have the knowledge and technology to develop these techniques, but I think a very reliable vaccine will be readily available by the end of the decade, and a cure 5-10 years after that.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
Hodgkin's Lymphoma is actually an outlier and a really useful example.
Hodgkin's is caused by a very specific mutation. Relatively early on, they realised that if you can poison the mutated cells without killing the patient, they get better. And if you're lucky, they don't just get better, they stay better, it's a bona fide cure.
This same idea (just kill the mutants) seems applicable to a lot of cancers, but Hodgkin's stands out because
1. Lots of young people get it. We don't know exactly why, but men in their 20s get it a lot (compared to say, lung cancer or other types of cancer, which mostly old people get). This means your cure has a remarkable effect. Old people were going to die soon anyway, but a 25 year old man cured of Hodgkins may well live 40-50 more years. So you can be 100% sure it's working.
2. One very specific cell that scientists already knew existed has one fairly obvious and easy to understand defect. They didn't know why yet, but the cells look all wrong under a microscope. Cured patients, and normal people who aren't sick don't have the characteristic cells. So if something kills those cells, but not the patient, it's a possible cure.
There is a downside to all this. We've been curing Hodgkin's for longer than we've done proper scientific medicine. The people who invented a cure didn't run a double blind trial to see how well it worked. They tried it, cured some people and went "Good work, time to go home". So today we have NO CLUE how bad Hodgkin's is exactly. If you're untreated at say, Stage IIb, can you expect to die in a year? Two years? Five years? We really don't know. Some people refuse treatment, and those tend to die horrible deaths a few years later, riddled with cancer and other problems, but not enough of them exist to have any confidence in an estimate and they're crazy people who avoid doctors, so who knows if it's a bad for normal people who just can't get cancer drugs.
Because we're sure it works it would be terribly unethical to run a trial now. You'd be condemning half the trial participants to death, just to prove a point! So we will probably never be sure.