Why, after years of intensive global research, did the scientists find how to cure good people infected with HIV? In the infinite complexity of the question, one of these barriers could have crossed.
One of the reasons that explains the delicate nature of the operation is based on the painful capacity of this virus to hide inside our cells, preventing it from destroying. Researchers have managed to find two methods to force the sleep virus to be activated, as they develop in a study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. However, these techniques were only tested “in vitro”, and we do not know if they will work on the human being.
Today, it is possible to avoid the replication of this intruder using medications, antiretrovirals. They allow a person with a normal life for HIV in normal life, without developing AIDS.
But these treatments do not destroy the virus. This has the ability to create what is called tanks within our organization. Virus sleep traces, ready to resume reproduction when the treatment stops. In this latent phase, HIV is so invisible in the eyes of our immune system, harmless but impossible to destroy. But the recent discovery of Australian researchers highlights two methods to awaken HIV, racing the way for elimination.
RNA and CRISPR to “wake up” and then point to HIV
“The objective is to awaken this latent virus that forms tanks. Awakening it so that it can leave the cells that infected in a latent way. If we get there, we can destroy it, either with antiretrovirals or with other immunotherapy approaches. Some antibodies have proven to be very effective against the HIV,” described with BFMTV Victor Appy, the investigation to the insert.
Bring it? But how? Researchers have demonstrated “in vitro” the effectiveness of two cutting methods. On the one hand, the technology now known by the general public: RNA, which has allowed the development of vaccines against COVVI-19. On the other hand, Crispr, sometimes described as “genetic scissors”, a process that allows you to modify an infinitely gene, to induce the desired effect. In this scenario: Force HIV activation.
In both cases, the result is the same, force the unwanted latent to activate and reappear in the radars. Other less specific approaches had been tested, without showing convincing clinical results, as explained by Olivier Schwartz, head of the “Virus and Immunity” unit at the Pasteur Institute. Through this method, according to the figures obtained during the tests in cell cultures, “there is a reactivation of the sleep virus from 60 to 80%,” figure.
“It is quite premature to say if there will be clinical applications”
The researchers interviewed agree that at the technical level, the described methods are interesting. But the tone is severely less ecstatic than on the side of the study authors. “We were all there, Boca, like ‘Waouh!'” The Guardian scientists said.
On the side of French specialists, we are still more careful. “The approach is technologically original and interesting. At the moment, it is quite premature to say that if there will be a clinical application, because we do not know the ability of these new lipid nanoparticles (associated with the RNA, the editor’s note) to achieve its cellular target and reactivate the virus in the body,” the Olivier Schwartz temperators.
“I would say that it is very elegant, innovative. They have used tools that we have met for just a few years (…) It is a beautiful technological advance, it is promising, but I do not mean that it is revolutionary. We are still far from demonstrating that it is effective both in animal and humans.
Pending questions remain numerous. Will the process be demonstrated in animals, in humans? Can we really eliminate the total or sufficient portion of the virus to avoid resurgence? What effects? So many questions that will require long years of additional research.
Source: BFM TV
