Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the body
May a cure be in reach for all those struck by this horrible disease.
If this is real, they will have HIV positive people lining up to participate in any trials they do. Seems promising.
And maybe we can use the same technique for other viruses that “hide” like HSV
Yeah, that’s awesome!
Prof Tomáš Hanke of the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, disputed the idea that getting RNA into white blood cells had been a significant challenge. He said the hope that all cells in the body where HIV was hiding could be reached in this way was “merely a dream”.
I think this statement makes more sense with more context.
Dr Jonathan Stoye, a retrovirologist and emeritus scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, who was not involved in the study, said the approach taken by the Melbourne team appeared be a major advance on existing strategies to force the virus out of hiding, but further studies would be needed to determine how best to kill it after that.
He added: “Ultimately, one big unknown remains. Do you need to eliminate the entire reservoir for success or just the major part? If just 10% of the latent reservoir survives will that be sufficient to seed new infection? Only time will tell.
“However, that does not detract from the significance of the current study, which represents a major potential advance in delivery of mRNA for therapeutic purposes to blood cells.”
Prof Tomáš Hanke of the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, disputed the idea that getting RNA into white blood cells had been a significant challenge. He said the hope that all cells in the body where HIV was hiding could be reached in this way was “merely a dream”.
Essentially Hanke and the other scientist Stoye believe the issue is that it will be impossible to eliminate 100% of the infection.
The current research team believes the white blood cell delivery method they developed will allow a large enough portion of the virus to be reached enough so for a cure. Stoye believes it will eliminate a majority of viral reservoirs, but is unsure if that’s effective. Hanke staunchly believes viral elimination must be total for a cure.
I think the research is quite promising and as the other commentor said may eliminate other viral infections that hide as well.
Lots of unknowns and lots of potential. Who knows it may take some cocktail of 3 or 4 different methods to bring about a cure, but this MRNA research is a strong contender
