Is This Finally The Cure For HIV Or Just Another False Alarm?
July 13, 2010 No Comments
Over the last week or so several very hopeful articles about cures and vaccines for HIV have come out but nobody is jumping for joy.
Is this because scientists are worried it’s just another false alarm?
There have been two major breakthroughs.
The first one is for a vaccine that uses naturally occurring antibodies found in some people who have HIV but don’t seem to be affected by it.
These antibodies work by stopping HIV from interacting with the immune system and from getting inside healthy cells.
By using these antibodies in a vaccine they can prevent 90% of the virus from infecting human cells. They may combine this with other previously found antibodies that protected against 80% of HIV. Together these antibodies could be the answer to finding a vaccine for HIV.
The second breakthrough is potentially a cure. Yes, you read that right!
They have found a way to use specific genes to block HIV from entering the immune cells that it normally attacks. By changing the genes in a person’s body through gene therapy, new cells will be created and multiply. This means that over time less and less HIV will be able to reproduce in that person’s body. The idea is “to engineer a patient’s own cells so they’d be resistant to HIV”. This may cost up to $100,000 per person, but compared to a lifetime supply of HIV medication, that’s a good thing.
Both of these medications are a long way off, with the vaccine still in the petri dish stage and the cure being studied in mice with human immune systems (how they managed that I have no idea).
But it looks like they are finally on the way to solving to puzzle of how HIV gets into healthy cells, and how to block this from happening. Fingers crossed!
