While HIV treatment has taken leaps and bounds over the last decade, the virus remains a dangerous one. Work on a cure has been slow, although promising, but the latest experiment offers a fascinating idea. Instead of fighting the virus, just cut it out of cells altogether.
HIV is a retrovirus, which means it inserts copies of itself into healthy cells to reproduce. Combined with its long gestation period, that makes HIV particularly hard to excise. Even if you wipe out all traces of it in the bloodstream, it can just reproduce from cells. But what if you could take it out of the cells?
Researchers at Temple University did just that, using the “genetic editor” CRISPR/Cas9. They removed infected cells, specifically T-cells, from an HIV patient, and used the tool to cut the HIV genome sequence out of the cell. Even better, the effect lingered after it was used; the cell was essentially protected permanently by the process.
We’re a long way away from using this as a cure, it should be noted. This test was largely to see whether the idea would even work in the first place, and to measure possible side effects and safety. There are a lot of immune cells in the body, and so far this has only been tested on one type. That said, the patient saw a reduced “viral load” from the therapy, so the promise is there, and if it can be further developed, it might herald the end of HIV, quite possibly in our lifetimes.
(Via Gizmodo)
