The British team, working at the National Institute of Medical Research in London, say they have identified a single gene which could hold the key to preventing HIV-positive from progressing to AIDS. Trying to determine why rhesus monkey cells are resistant to HIV, the investigators found that in monkeys, a gene called ‘Trim 5 alpha’ prevents the virus from replicating inside the cells. Only a tiny difference between the monkey Trim 5 alpha gene and its human counterpart was needed to stop HIV replication.
While urging caution about the amount of time it would take to develop a treatment, the institute’s head of virology, Dr Jonathan Stoye, said the discovery had “significant implications for the development of an effective gene therapy to combat AIDS.”
In a separate discovery, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in the US say they have found a way to flush dormant HIV out of hiding, reopening the hope of viral eradication using current-day antiretroviral drugs. Dr Roger Pomerantz and his team discovered that interleukin-7, a naturally occurring immune system protein, could stimulate latent viruses to leave the viral reservoirs where they lie tantalisingly out of reach of drugs.
The researchers hope that by combining IL-7 with antiretroviral drugs, the ‘turnover’ of latent virus would be increased, leading to a gradual depletion of the viral reservoirs.
Finally, German researchers say they have found a completely new target for antiretroviral drugs, an enzyme called deoxyhypusine synthase, or DHS. In test-tube experiments, they say an experimental DHS inhibitor drug called CNI-1493 was able to suppress HIV in infected cell cultures by up to 98 percent.
The team says the discovery could open up a new class of anti-HIV drugs, DHS inhibitors. They say their experiments suggest that such drugs would not only be effective against HIV but unlikely to lead to resistance.
