Potential to remove HIV from infected cells
/‘Molecular scissors’ successfully remove HIV genes from all tissues in infected monkeys
The top story from the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2019) in Seattle this week has been a likely second HIV cure. However, the cure involved an expensive and risky therapy – a bone-marrow transplant – that would never be broadly applicable.
Just as significant in the long term may be a study reported in the same session that used much more benign technology to achieve what may be a cure in monkeys.
A team of researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA, has removed the retroviral genes from the cells of monkeys infected with SIV, the monkey analogue of HIV. The researchers found that the gene-snipping enzyme they used, contained within the shell of a common cold-type virus so that it could simulate an infection and enter cells, successfully removed the SIV genes from a majority – and possibly all – cells in all the monkeys’ organs where levels were measured, including hard-to-access ones such as the brain.
