'Assassin' of HIV

In the race to find effective drugs against HIV, the Maryland team of scientists built a ' double- armed virus agent ' with a mission to find where HIV is hiding. They combine pieces of HIV with another virus to create a very tough new " hybrid " assassin who knows every trick of the original pathogen.

From a medical point of view, what makes this new " killer " effective is that it has two unique characteristics, not in any other virus. First, it can be reproduced in macaque monkeys - the monkey is often used in medical research - to cause AIDS-like illness.

That's the key, because macaque monkeys have the ideal blood vessels for HIV virus research. Second, this new pathogen can completely complement the drugs that treat AIDS.

To create the ' hybrid ' virus, called RT-SHIV , researchers carefully assemble a piece of genetic material from HIV-1, the mainstream of HIV, into the genome of the pathogen of the monkey, called SHIV. , by replacing about 1/10 of the genome. In addition to making the target enzyme of many antiretroviral therapies.

According to virologist Vineet KewalRamani of the experimental group of the National Institute of Medical Research (NIH) who created this technique, its virus and macaque copy become the most ideal model for HIV response to Antiretroviral therapy, and ' animal models ' of the disease are vital for medical progress. They facilitate researchers to experiment with therapies that can pose unacceptable dangers to human trials.

Researchers RT-SHIV at the National Institute of Medical Research.
(Photo: Popularmechanics)

Search for a hiding place for HIV

Doctors have long observed that antiretroviral drugs can push HIV out of human blood, but once the patient stops using the drug, the virus quickly recovers, indicating the possibility of it hiding. somewhere in the body.

Researchers like Robert Siliciano (a virologist at Johns Hopkins University) spent years exploring HIV hiding places. A shelter, a set of immune cells called CD4 has been discovered . 'But there is another main point where we don't know where it is now. We hope to use this model to find its second shelter , 'said Robert Siliciano.

The latest results collected from the recently reported NIH show that the signal is very encouraging. RT-SHIV, like HIV, will hide when being attacked by antiretroviral drugs. KewalRamani also said: 'We have evidence of such a hiding place and we are currently trying to find it'.

In the next study, the NIH team of scientists will plan to use antiretroviral drugs to suppress RT-SHIV in virus-infected monkeys, and then test the tissue or cell group. Any cell has a deadly virus. After pinpointing the locus in macaque monkeys, one can find that place in humans.

Better remedies

Research on RT-SHIV may also help improve the success and safety of all anti-HIV medications. The threat to HIV patients is likely to be drug-resistant!

However, it is not easy to study the development of this drug resistance on a viral culture plate in a laboratory, according to virologist Paul Bieniasz of Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and Rockfeller University in New York. Resistance develops in the laboratory other than in the warm environment of a human or animal body.

KewalRamani's team found that RT-SHIV, once again simulated HIV, knew how to deceive treatment medicine. Because, some experimental drugs have completely failed in the hospital, even though they have previously shown promise in cell cultures in the lab.

Dien San