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.

Comments

Zombie Movies

[IntentionalStance]

Don't most of them start with a discovery like this. Just saying.

Re:Zombie Movies

[MightyMartian]

We're talking about a show where the technobabble frequently was little more than Geordy announcing "a concentrated tachyon beam tuned to the right frequency will yada yada yada...", with Data piping in "There's a 72.3% probability that that will blah blah blah and blow us all up", with Riker just rolling his eyes and thinking "I know this gig pays well, but...", and Picard finally saying "Make it so. I'll be in my quarters, but inform me immediately when yada yada yada makes blah blah blah happen." Troi, of course, will simple stand there looking like she just pinched a loaf in her form fitting stretch one piece body suit, while Dr. Crusher goes down to sickbay to deal with the inevitable injuries and psychoses brought on by the inevitable yada yada yadaing.

Re:HIV articles

[ElRabbit]

Like they say in the article, it's pure marketing that the thing could be used on humans. The real goal is to cure mice from any known disease, have them live forever and make them take over the world tonight.