Comments on: HIV Cure On The Horizon? http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/ Big Teeth. Huge Ass. Surprisingly Reasonable. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:38:51 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: How does one volunteer for a trial experiment using the enzyme http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/comment-page-1/#comment-369331 How does one volunteer for a trial experiment using the enzyme Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:46:16 +0000 http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/#comment-369331 How does one volunteer for a trial experiment using this enzyme? How does one volunteer for a trial experiment using this enzyme?

]]> By: sleipner http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/comment-page-1/#comment-365656 sleipner Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:54:31 +0000 http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/#comment-365656 There are two main problems with HIV eradication. One is that the virus mutates rapidly and radically, with only one out of every 11 copies being viable, that's why it is so capable of becoming drug resistant, especially if patients aren't particularly good at consistency. This makes many potential treatments and/or vaccines not work because the virus simply changes slightly and avoids the issue. There are quite a few variants on the HIV virus out there, and they are different enough from each other to prevent a single vaccine from blocking them all. The other is that the virus gets into inactive immune system cells that can remain inactive for years or even decades, harboring the virus until some event causes it to activate and begin spewing out new HIV copies. At first, researchers thought the "cocktail" had eradicated the virus in some patients because the viral load was undetectable for so long, but then it started coming back due to these sleeping viral reservoirs. It sounds like this enzyme has the potential to get past the second issue, which is by far the hardest for eradication because the sleeper cells don't really interact with their environment much. The real tricks are to get the enzymes to where they need to go, and when there to only latch onto the HIV virus. I would say, though, that this is probably one of the more promising leads to come along in a while, but as they're saying it's very premature to expect even any test results for years yet. There are two main problems with HIV eradication. One is that the virus mutates rapidly and radically, with only one out of every 11 copies being viable, that’s why it is so capable of becoming drug resistant, especially if patients aren’t particularly good at consistency. This makes many potential treatments and/or vaccines not work because the virus simply changes slightly and avoids the issue. There are quite a few variants on the HIV virus out there, and they are different enough from each other to prevent a single vaccine from blocking them all.

The other is that the virus gets into inactive immune system cells that can remain inactive for years or even decades, harboring the virus until some event causes it to activate and begin spewing out new HIV copies. At first, researchers thought the “cocktail” had eradicated the virus in some patients because the viral load was undetectable for so long, but then it started coming back due to these sleeping viral reservoirs.

It sounds like this enzyme has the potential to get past the second issue, which is by far the hardest for eradication because the sleeper cells don’t really interact with their environment much. The real tricks are to get the enzymes to where they need to go, and when there to only latch onto the HIV virus. I would say, though, that this is probably one of the more promising leads to come along in a while, but as they’re saying it’s very premature to expect even any test results for years yet.

]]> By: Ziusudra http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/comment-page-1/#comment-363004 Ziusudra Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:06:41 +0000 http://donklephant.com/2007/06/29/hiv-cure-on-the-horizon/#comment-363004 <i>...I’m going to predict that a cure is going to come from a novel approach like this one.</i> Considering the standard approaches have failed, I say that's a pretty safe bet. …I’m going to predict that a cure is going to come from a novel approach like this one.

Considering the standard approaches have failed, I say that’s a pretty safe bet.

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