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Posted On: 03/16/2019 10:11:47 AM
Post# of 154735
Some interesting info in this article, ignoring the crispr talk, which we have discussed before.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/curin...rispr-help
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON—Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs have turned HIV infection from a death sentence to a chronic condition. In most people the drugs routinely tamp HIV levels so low that standard tests find no virus in blood samples. But inexplicably, in about 10% of infected people HIV remains easily detectable in the blood even though they take their daily pills and are not saddled with drug-resistant mutants of the virus.
A study presented last week at the largest annual U.S. HIV/AIDS conference offers a solution to this riddle: “repliclones,” populations of replicating cells with HIV’s genome nestled inside them. “It’s the most interesting presentation I’ve seen here,” says George Pavlakis, a retrovirologist at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland.
Some remain skeptical CRISPR could ever hit all HIV-infected cells. Douglas Richman, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, notes that even a person who has an undetectable viral load may have as many as 100 million cells harboring HIV DNA. “The problem with all the cure interventions is they’re impacting a few cells,” Richman says. “That still leaves a gigantic amount of virus. And when you’re eliminating something that’s dangerous, you have to get all of them.”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/curin...rispr-help
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON—Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs have turned HIV infection from a death sentence to a chronic condition. In most people the drugs routinely tamp HIV levels so low that standard tests find no virus in blood samples. But inexplicably, in about 10% of infected people HIV remains easily detectable in the blood even though they take their daily pills and are not saddled with drug-resistant mutants of the virus.
A study presented last week at the largest annual U.S. HIV/AIDS conference offers a solution to this riddle: “repliclones,” populations of replicating cells with HIV’s genome nestled inside them. “It’s the most interesting presentation I’ve seen here,” says George Pavlakis, a retrovirologist at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland.
Some remain skeptical CRISPR could ever hit all HIV-infected cells. Douglas Richman, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, notes that even a person who has an undetectable viral load may have as many as 100 million cells harboring HIV DNA. “The problem with all the cure interventions is they’re impacting a few cells,” Richman says. “That still leaves a gigantic amount of virus. And when you’re eliminating something that’s dangerous, you have to get all of them.”
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