CRISPR Eliminates HIV In Live Animals (genengnews.com)

Researchers from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh show that HIV-1 infections can be eliminated from the genomes of living animals. Findings from the study have been published in the journal Molecular Therapy. Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News reports: This is the first study to demonstrate that HIV-1 replication can be completely shut down and the virus eliminated from infected cells in animals with a powerful gene-editing technology known as CRISPR/Cas9. The new work builds on a previous proof-of-concept study that the team published in 2016, in which they used transgenic rat and mouse models with HIV-1 DNA incorporated into the genome of every tissue of the animals' bodies. They demonstrated that their strategy could delete the targeted fragments of HIV-1 from the genome in most tissues in the experimental animals. In this new study, the LKSOM team genetically inactivated HIV-1 in transgenic mice, reducing the RNA expression of viral genes by roughly 60% to 95% -- confirming their earlier findings. They then tested their system in mice acutely infected with EcoHIV, the mouse equivalent of human HIV-1. In the third animal model, a latent HIV-1 infection was recapitulated in humanized mice engrafted with human immune cells, including T cells, followed by HIV-1 infection. "These animals carry latent HIV in the genomes of human T cells, where the virus can escape detection," Dr. Hu explained. Amazingly, after a single treatment with CRISPR/Cas9, viral fragments were successfully excised from latently infected human cells embedded in mouse tissues and organs.

Comments

Flabbergasted by the implications

[Chrontius]

This could actually move people off antiretroviarals, and into long-term remission.

Don't expect a silver bullet - AIDS will be cured like cancer, driven into remission, and only "cured" after we're confident that it won't show up again later on.

In spite of that? I expect it's going to be far cheaper than treating patients with long duration HAART cocktails, and treating the side effects of those drugs. Even if each patient's viral strains have to be sequenced, and a CRISPR cocktail picked based on the strains harbored, AIDS drugs are not cheap. This could be a turning point representing the beginning of the end of AIDS.

Re:Flabbergasted by the implications

[MayeulC]

Even if each patient's viral strains have to be sequenced, and a CRISPR cocktail picked based on the strains harbored, AIDS drugs are not cheap. This could be a turning point representing the beginning of the end of AIDS.

I agree. And this could also have the additional benefit of driving costs down for sequencing, and CRISPR-based therapies, which could in turn bring such a cure to more people, and enable the same to be done for other diseases.

This is awesome

[Baron_Yam]

Gene editing, through every part of the organism reachable by the immune system, in a live mammal. HIV will ultimately be a mere footnote, because this technology is an early first step to editing your own genome as a consenting adult instead of fiddling around with the genes of a fertilized egg and hoping you haven't screwed over a future person's life in the process.

You won't be rebuilding large structures in the body with this, but there's still so much that can be done if you can alter genes in an adult. There are a lot of deleterious genetic conditions that can be corrected, and then you move on to upgrading.

Re:Bill HIcks

[esperto]

His comment is tong in cheek, but one thing AIDS epidemic is "good" for, at least outside Africa, is to help keep in check other STDs. The AIDS scare helped a lot to make people use condoms and halted the spread of some common STDs that people took as not that bad (clamidia, herpes, etc.).

Not having this boogie man can actually make those other diseases spike.

Re:Do you want a zombie apocalypse?

[Salgak1]

The point being, it was the first. Bleeding-edge tech ALWAYS costs. The example of big-screen TVs is instructive. I'm in my mid-50s, and recall when any TV above a 26 inch tube was purely a rich man's toy. Price came down. Then flatscreen monitors, both TV and computer came out. Expensive and small. Now they're big and cheap, to the point you can pull a box with one off the shelf at your local Wally-world.

The same model applies to Medical Technologies. The only difference is, EVERYONE demands the bleeding edge (pardon the phrase) in medical technology. . .

CRISPR has potential application for flu

[SethJohnson]

This system would not be useful for treating any virus that doesn't use DNA (like, say, the flu)....

Per this article in Scientific American--

...But until the arrival of CRISPR, virologists lacked the tools to easily alter ferret genes. Xiaoqun Wang and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have used CRISPR to tweak genes involved in ferret brain development, and they are now using it to modify the animals' susceptibility to the flu virus. He says that he will make the model available to infectious-disease researchers.

Note the open-source mindset already beginning to surround CRISPR! Researchers are exchanging their CRISPR recipes without concern for patents and intellectual property. This can really accelerate progress with developing CRISPR-based treatments.