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Researchers Claim Success In Removing HIV From Living Cells (nature.com)
ffkom writes: A recent publication from German researchers claims success in removing the HI-Virus from living cells, showing a way to completely cure AIDS rather than just suppressing its symptoms (by lowering the amount of viruses) by permanent medication: "Current combination antiretroviral therapies (cART) efficiently suppress HIV-1 reproduction in humans, but the virus persists as integrated proviral reservoirs in small numbers of cells. To generate an antiviral agent capable of eradicating the provirus from infected cells, we employed 145 cycles of substrate-linked directed evolution to evolve a recombinase (Brec1) that site-specifically recognizes a 34-bp sequence present in the long terminal repeats (LTRs) of the majority of the clinically relevant HIV-1 strains and subtypes. Brec1 efficiently, precisely and safely removes the integrated provirus from infected cells and is efficacious on clinical HIV-1 isolates in vitro and in vivo, including in mice humanized with patient-derived cells. Our data suggest that Brec1 has potential for clinical application as a curative HIV-1 therapy."
Clinical trials are expected to start in Hamburg, Germany, soon.
Magic Johnson decided to share the cure
Are like battery/solar power articles. The best battery/HIV cure is just 2 years away. Always. But it never happens.
Don't most of them start with a discovery like this. Just saying.
Next we'll have Nexus 6 replicants.
This is genetic engineering tech, applied to humans. Are you now going to require that all the HIV patients using this treatment wear labels? You know, the scarlet letter of the left.
If this actually works it could be one of the most important advances in human medicine for decades. Hopefully it actually works and isn't the typical vaporware HIV cure.
I haven't even RTFA yet, but I was wondering if this could have applications with other viruses that become long-term residents of the body. I'm thinking of things in the herpes family like... herpes, or chickenpox / shingles. The trick with most of these is long-term, mostly-dormant viruses hiding in the cells. If you can wake them up, the immune system can clear them, but they are effectively hidden inside the cells while quiescent.
N/T
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Are you sure that it's not North Korea that said this?
until the common cold is a thing of the past?
You under estimate [Greed].. remember Gordon Geekco [Greed is Good].. hence it will be expensive.. but made.. then burn itself out.. and will become an Orphan drug/treatment. The technique is novel however.. that they used humanized mice for testing makes it seem even more "real".
Could be, but that's not to say there's not an immense effort to find a cure. That's going to be one for the history books, a Nobel prize or two and whatnot.
-SR
Only 88% of HIV are affected by this change. So not to be Debbie Downer, but as it is now, all this would do is change which strain is the most prevalent. 88% isn't good enough; Hell, 99.99% isn't good enough, as 'Life finds a way' (as far as viruses can be considered alive).
You can climb up onto your moral high horse and suggest that people get what they deserve. Or you can help people who need it, even when you don't have to. It's called not being an asshole. And if you can't do that, at least acknowledge that healthcare costs for everyone would drop if a cure was found, so it would still benefit you.
In countries with single-payer healthcare this is nowhere near as much of a problem...
Gotta disagree with you saying that 88% isn't good enough.
1) If current measures are reducing transmission of HIV to R values (new cases per existing case) of something like 1.2 or lower, this could bring it below the threshold of being able to increase in numbers and thus speed eradication.
2) If 88% of CURRENT HIV+ are completely cured, drugs and resources saved can be concentrated on the remaining 12%, thus reducing R values even further, speeding eradication.
3) 88% cure rate is a pretty massive reduction in human suffering, isn't it?
--PM
It would be interesting to see if this method might be effective for other chronic viral infections, such as rabies or hepatitis infections that were found after symptoms began showing up where it's too late for vaccination.
Not to mention the AC hypocrite likely is also a frequent visitor to pornhub and has no problem watching a man's penis in a woman's anus, and deams of being able to duplicate the experience with his own sexual partner.
HIV is part of a larger problem called being irresponsible. 98% of all social welfare spending is due to people being irresponsible.
Unfortunately we all get saddled with the the expense, and spending on far better things suffers.
Anyone who contracts AIDS these days did so knowing full well they were engaging in behavior that could lead to their predicament.
1. You are incorrect about HIV transmission. In the US, yes, it _was_ largely a gay disease. It is not, and has not been, primarily about gay men for a long time now. In the places where it is most devastating (Africa), it has never been about men fucking each other in the ass.
2. The time / money spent on a disease depends on many factors, and it's a limited pool so, yes, spending money on HIV means less for others. But:
A. the effect of HIV worldwide has been huge, even compared to other diseases.
B. What we learn about HIV can be applied to many other communicable diseases.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
do yourself a favor and stay away from Nurses and or Doctors.
Hint some folks get AIDS by way of needle sticks while they are trying to help folks.
Is it just me or does your average Slashdot user have a higher interest in curing AIDS than your average person?
Maybe all those Mouth Breathers living in their mother's basements have a "partner"?
Maybe they have a specific interest in seeing THIS disease cured?
Just Wondering.
Remind yourself of that when your unfaithful spouse contracts you with HIV. Or when your kid gets it from a needle when he's going through his rebel years.
If you don't want to live in a civilized society that takes care of everyone, maybe you should try moving over to Somalia. I heard they don't pay much taxes there and it's every man for himself.
-SR
Oh shut up you idiot. If it's anything like the hepatitis C drugs, they'll just charge a shitload for it. Trust me, the will for a researcher to win a nobel prize is greater than the greed of big pharma. Really.
Don't forget drugs.
I would rather the funds go into solving cancer (immunotherapy is closing in) or a common world wide problem like malaria or systemd
Sorry I was unclear: Yes, you are correct about the US. Most HIV positive people are males homosexuals, and that has not changed.
Looking at the world, it is not and has not been about gay men. Look at: https://www.avert.org/professi... . Most are in sub-Saharan Africa. Almost 5% of the population there is a carrier.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Less than 1%
You're some religious nutjob that would vote for Cruz, aren't you? Are you a Revelationist, too? Are you chomping at the bit for the End of the World? I got news for you, asshole (or cunt, as the case may be): If there was such a thing as 'god' (which there isn't, and if you had an IQ above 75, you'd have realized that about the same time you realized Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy aren't real either) you would be sent to Hell, not Heaven, because you are a hateful asshole. Luckily for Humanity there is no 'god', there is only us humans, and eventually, if we manage to not erradicate ourselves through war or global warming, we'll manage to breed your particular flavor of violently ignorant nonsense out of our genome, and finally, FINALLY be on the road to being truly Civilized and Sentient. Meanwhile we'll just have to keep up slapping idiotic losers like you down every single time you try to drag us back into the Dark Ages. Do us a favor, though: Go get yourself fixed before you pass on your defective genes to another generation of morons.
If only 1% punch me in the nose for being an ass, does it still hurt?
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Let them assholes die
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This will be expensive.
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