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Researchers Claim Success In Removing HIV From Living Cells (nature.com)

Posted by timothy on from the nobel-material dept.

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.

7 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Hopefully It Really Works by nateman1352 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  2. Other resident viruses? by bosef1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Other resident viruses? by kinko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      HIV is a "retrovirus", which means the the virus's DNA integrates into the host's DNA. Some other viruses do this, but I think most don't. Some are more interesting, eg EBV is a virus from the herpes family which infects several different tissue types, and we know it can integrate into human DNA inside white blood cells, but I don't think there's proof that it can integrate inside liver or stomach cells.

      As a retrovirus, the HIV sequence successfully breaks into a cell, then breaks into the cell's nucleus, then into one of the nucleus' chromosomes. (This is obviously harder to detect than viruses that stay inside the cell's cytoplasm, or that enter the nucleus but stay apart as their own episome [mini-chromosome].) That's what the article is referring to when they say their method recognises a 34-base pair long sequence - it is recognising that piece of the viral sequence in our own chromosome, and then uses something to snip out enough of the viral sequence that it can no longer make new copies of itself.

      Obviously you want to be careful with any therapy that involves cutting up bits of human chromosomes... :)

    2. Re:Other resident viruses? by Gaygirlie · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  3. Re:HIV articles by ArylAkamov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pretty much. I remember hearing about a possible cure for aids years ago, researchers claimed it worked in mice and it was months away from human testing.

    Never saw another word about it. It would be nice if they would at least say why it didn't work in humans instead of MASSIVE HYPE and then nothing.

  4. Re:HIV articles by DamonHD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not all research works out. Research is hard. If it wasn't then it would be a risk. If you only want finished products then camp out in a Apple store and stop reading Slashdot. This type of entitled whining is very very dull and adults should avoid it.

    I'm running a research project right now. Guess what, bits of it aren't working as expected, but some of those failures are actually interesting and may save someone else a bunch of trouble.

    Damon

    --
    http://m.earth.org.uk/
  5. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good by PeterM+from+Berkeley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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