Gene Editing Promises HIV Immunity For All?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Science, TechnologySome exciting news about making it much harder for HIV to grab ahold of your immune system.
Viruses enter cells and take them over, but to get inside, they need a handhold. HIV pulls itself in by grabbing onto a protein called CCR5, which decorates the surface of T-cells, which are one of the two major types of white blood cells and play an important role in helping the body fight infections.Back in the 1990′s, researchers took interest in a handful of promiscuous gay men who were able to engage in sexual relations with their HIV-positive partners with impunity. Most of them had a mutation that kept their cells from producing normal CCR5 protein.
Armed with that knowledge, scientists have developed several tactics to block the production of CCR5 or perturb its shape so that the HIV virus can’t grab onto it during the first step of its hijacking attempt.
This is just in the testing phase right now, but I’ll keep my eye out for any updates because it seems like an elegant little solution like this will eventually be the answer to stopping the spread of this awful disease.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 and is filed under Science, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Gene editing certainly does not promise immunity for all. If the solution isn’t cheap enough to be purchased by governments and distributed for free to entire populations like the current ARV cocktails, it’s just a cure for the 1% of the world who can, say, afford health insurance.
Also, “gene therapy” has always been iffy at best. I’d much rather see a drug that binds to the receptors of that protein, blocking the virus rather than altering the gene that codes for the protein itself.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
If you think that a protein binding treatment (vast) is better than a gene therapy you are thinking incorectly. Gene editing/moding holds more promise due the effect being preserved… furthermore if corn can produce BT then my kids’ kids can be without CCR5. yeah i said it, and it’s nothing short of evolution.