Experts may have gone a step closer to HIV good.
Researchers in Australia have developed a new treatment that forces hidden fragments of the virus – normally hidden in human cells – to originate and to expose themselves to the immune system.
The breakthrough could enable the body, helped by antiviral medicines, to detect and destroy these persistent viral reservoirs.
HIV has remained incurable because the virus can integrate itself into the DNA of a cell, which are sleeping and not detectable for both medication and immune refuge.
But the scientists say they have created a nanoparticle that is able to give genetic instructions to infected cells, so that they produce a signal that reveals the presence of the virus.
Dr. Paula Cevaal, researcher at the Doherty Institute and co-author of the study, said the guardian That this performance was ‘previously impossible for thought’.
“In the field of biomedicine, many things don’t end up in the clinic in the end,” she said, “that is the unfortunate truth; I don’t want to paint a nicer image than what the reality is’.
‘But in terms of specifically the field of HIV remedy, we have never seen anything as well as what we see, in terms of how well we can reveal this virus.
“So from that point of view we are very hopeful that we can also see this kind of reaction in an animal, and that we could eventually do this with people.”
Hiv. It can hide in cells, making it very difficult to treat (stock image)
The discovery was first unveiled in the magazine Nature communicationWith researchers who said they were initially so surprised that they had to perform the tests again.
Further research will be needed to determine whether revealing the virus is sufficient to activate an immune response, whereby the tests are only performed in the lab.
And it can take years before clinical tests for the medicine start, if it should continue with rigorous tests before consumers were to be reached.
But the advance represents another step forward for the 1.2 million Americans who currently live with an HIV infection – for which they have to use drugs every day.
To 31,800 people are infected every year, although this is a decrease of 12 percent on five years ago.
Almost 40 million people worldwide have the virus.
The nanoparticle is based on mrna technology, the same that was used in the COVID vaccins made by Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers.
In their article, the scientists revealed that they could give mrna instructions to cells with the help of the nanoparticle.
This mrna then instructs cells to generate substances that reveal the presence of HIV, but only if the virus is present.
The study was conducted in the lab and carried out in cells donated by HIV patients.
The graph above shows the number of new HIV infections that are diagnosed in the US per year until 2022. The number has fallen slightly, shows the figures, although it remains high
It is after the Trump administration has been reported to have collected financing for research into a potential HIV vaccine.
The termination of the research program of $ 258 million surprised scientists from Duke University and SCRIPPS Research Institute behind the project.
They were informed that the program was cut through e -mail, in which civil servants said they would concentrate on other strategies to eliminate HIV / AIDS instead.
HIV influences disproportionately gay and bisexual persons in the US, which are estimated 67 percent of the new infections – according to data from 2022.
People who acquire HIV through heterosexual sex formed 22 percent of the new diagnoses, or 8,495 cases, while those who were diagnosed after injecting medicines formed seven percent of the new diagnoses or 2,650 cases.
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