New ‘Armour’ Developed to Avoid Infection from AIDS Virus
Félix Goñi, director of the Biophysics Unit at the CSIC-University of the Basque Country Mixed Centre
The doors are closing on the AIDS virus. The scientific community continues to strive to find the formula that will halt the advance of one of the viruses that has sparked most scientific interest over recent years. A study by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) and led by Mr Félix Goñi, director of the Biophysics Unit at the CSIC-University of the Basque Country Mixed Centre,
The research study lays down the bases of possible future pharmaceutical drugs that will enable combating the AIDS virus at its initial phase and has been published in the prestigious journal Chemistry & Biology of the Cell Group. Participating in the research, apart from Mr Goñi, was a team from the National Biotechnology Centre (CSIC-Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and another from the Institute of Applied Chemistry of Cataloniaa (CSIC, Barcelona). The article is entitled “Dihydrosphingomyelin impairs HIV-1 infection by rigidifying liquid-ordered membrane domains”.
The study provides a new, hitherto unexplored focus on scientific research. This pioneering contribution on the AIDS virus is based on the regulation of the fluidity of the cell membranes and seeks to avoid the phenomenon known as the fusion of membranes, a consequence of contact between the cell membranes and the membrane of the virus itself. (more…)
HIV Prevention Science Scores a Victory — the Gel Works!
Dr. Ian McGowan, IRMA Scientific Vice-Chair and co-principal investigator of the Microbicide Trials Network.
Today at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, members of the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) and thousands of other HIV advocates and scientists cheered a long-awaited, much anticipated success in the quest for new HIV prevention technologies. Researchers announced that a vaginal gel has been shown to significantly reduce a woman’s risk of being infected with HIV and genital herpes.
These game-changing results of the safety and effectiveness study of an antiretroviral microbicide gel were reported by the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA).
The microbicide gel that CAPRISA studied contained 1% tenofovir—an antiretroviral drug commonly used to treat people living with HIV—and was found to be 39% effective in reducing a woman’s risk of becoming infected with HIV during vaginal intercourse and 51% effective in preventing genital herpes infections among the women in the trial. These protective effects increased as the use of tenofovir increased, so that women who used the gel in more than 80% of their sex acts during the trial had a 54% reduction in HIV infections. If and when other studies of tenofovir gel confirm these results, widespread use of the gel, at this level of protection, could prevent millions of new HIV infections over the next two decades. Tenofovir is also being studied as a form of oral pre-exposure prophylaxis. (more…)
Stem Cells Can Be Engineered to Kill HIV
By Enrique Rivero
Jerome A. Zack, UCLA professor of medicine and associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.
Researchers from the UCLA AIDS Institute and colleagues have for the first time demonstrated that human blood stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill HIV-infected cells — a process that potentially could be used against a range of chronic viral diseases.
The study, published Dec. 7 in the-peer reviewed online journal PLoS ONE, provides proof-of-principle — that is, a demonstration of feasibility — that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine.
“We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells,” said lead investigator Scott G. Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. “These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors.” (more…)
Study Will Test Therapies to Eradicate HIV Infection — Medicine’s Holy Grail
David Margolis, M.D.
Researchers from the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases have received $2.7 million from the National Institutes of Health to develop and test new therapeutic agents that may eradicate HIV infection.
The two-year study will discover drugs that can completely “purge” HIV from the system, including the reservoirs where it hides from current antiviral therapy. It is because of these reservoirs that no one with HIV infection has been cured, said David Margolis, M.D., professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology in the UNC School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study.
Small molecules will be initially screened in an artificial HIV system. Potential drugs will then be rescreened in human cell systems and tested in a “humanized” mouse model, created by J. Victor Garcia-Martinez, Ph.D., who recently joined the UNC faculty as professor of medicine from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Finally, the best candidates will be tested in cells from HIV patients. (more…)
HIV Resistant Primates Provide New Strategies for AIDS Vaccine Research
Studies of primates such as sooty managbeys shown here – a medium–sized African monkey – are critical for the AIDS vaccine effort say researchers.
Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, believe conventional vaccine strategies should not be the only avenue explored in the development of an effective AIDS vaccine. Based on studying simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) in African nonhuman primates, they propose an additional new approach to the AIDS vaccine research agenda in a commentary featured in the August issue of Nature Medicine. Their recommendations outline specific research priorities and describe how each may lead to a novel “out of the box” approach for developing an AIDS vaccine.
“Developing an effective AIDS vaccine has eluded scientists because the virus is tricky,” says Guido Silvestri, MD, a Yerkes affiliate scientist and director of clinical virology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and lead author of the commentary. Silvestri, along with co-author James Else, DVM, associate director for veterinary resources at Yerkes, writes, “Over 25 years after the discovery of HIV as the etiological agent of AIDS, no effective vaccine for the disease is available.” (more…)
Has HIV Become More Virulent?
Damage to patients’ immune systems is happening sooner now than it did at the beginning of the HIV epidemic, suggesting the virus has become more virulent, according to a new study in the May 1, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.
Conventional wisdom says several years will pass between HIV infection and the need for antiretroviral therapy. However, clinicians have observed that patients are entering HIV care with lower initial CD4 cell counts than in previous years and now often require antiretroviral therapy soon after entering care, raising the question of whether HIV has become more virulent. (more…)
Researchers Progress Toward AIDS Vaccine
Rutgers professors Eddy and Gail Ferstandig Arnold found that animals made antibodies that can stop a very diverse set of HIV isolates or varieties. (Photo Nick Romanenko)
Rutgers AIDS researchers Gail Ferstandig Arnold and Eddy Arnold may have turned a corner in their search for a HIV vaccine. In a paper just published in the Journal of Virology, the husband and wife duo and their colleagues report on their research progress.
With the support of the National Institutes of Health, the Arnolds and their team have been able to take a piece of HIV that is involved with helping the virus enter cells, put it on the surface of a common cold virus, and then immunize animals with it. They found that the animals made antibodies that can stop a very diverse set of HIV isolates or varieties. (more…)
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