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New strategy to halt HIV growth: block its sugar and nutrient pipeline. HIV has a voracious sweet tooth, which turns out to be its Achilles' heel, reports a new study from Northwestern Medicine and Vanderbilt University.
After the virus invades an activated immune cell, it craves sugar and nutrients from the cell to replicate and fuel its wild growth throughout the body.
Scientists discovered the switch that turns on the immune cell's abundant sugar and nutrient pipeline. Then they blocked the switch with an experimental compound, shutting down the pipeline, and, thereby, starving HIV to death. The virus was unable to replicate in human cells in vitro.
The discovery may have applications in treating cancer, which also has an immense appetite for sugar and other nutrients in the cell, which it needs to grow and spread.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/05/hivs-sweet-tooth-is-its-downfall.html
[Abstract]: http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1004864
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Monday June 01 2015, @08:52AM
Worrying about mutations that beat the cure is like worrying about children figuring out how to open the safety locks on cupboards/doors/medicine bottles/gun safes/aeroplanes - it's gonna happen eventually, all we can do is delay the inevitable and make sure we reduce the harm done along the way by the absolute maximum amount possible.
Besides, treating an immunosuppresent disease with an immunosuppresent is just an evil-genius level of lateral thinking. Give that man the Nobel prize! And then lock his ass up before he takes over the world!