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

Re:Other resident viruses?

[Gaygirlie]

They have just recently tried removing cancer via modified cells, forcing the immune-system to remove the cancer-cells: http://arstechnica.com/science...

There are some downsides to this at the moment, but they are trying to perfect the technique. The takeout that someone should take from this, however, is that the researchers have shown it's possible to create a "vaccine" against certain kinds of cancers -- that is a MAJOR fucking step forward.