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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: 2) by FatPhil on Monday June 01 2015, @08:24AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @08:30AM
Yea but how fucked we talking? While you're on the drug that fucks your immune system, are you still contagious? Because if you're not, get your ass to fucking, as many times as you can before you pass out from exhaustion. Just stay away from the common cold cuz it might kill ya.
(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!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @09:07AM
> The virus hasn't mutated a gene to turn X back on again. Pet dogs have learnt how to use bathroom taps, just saying.
That's no reason no t to try. Even if this only works for 18 months, it will save countless lives and new infections. But the chances are it will continue to be effective.
> Don't worry, you don't have AIDS fucking your immune system, we've fixed that with a drug that fucks your immune system instead!
Yeah but that would only be temporary, surely. Starve the cells to prevent replication, then wait however many weeks for the infected cells to die off naturally. All cells in the human body have a limited lifespan. Quick blood test to make sure the virus cells are all gone, and boom, you're back to normal.
You'd probably have to take all kinds of drugs and precautions during the waiting period to compensate for the effects of the treatment, but that seems like a small price to pay for CURING YOUR FRIGGING AIDS.
Apply this treatment to enough people (doing this in Africa would be challenging to say the least, but exactly the kind of thing charities and NGOs would love to get their teeth into.) and maybe we could give smallpox some company in disease hell.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday June 01 2015, @07:17PM
I don't think you understand the process. (I know I don't.) As I read the article this merely halts replication, it doesn't kill the virus. And that means that while the disease is suppressed, it isn't gone. Viruses can generally "live" for quite a long time without metabolizing. I wouldn't even be sure that it means you aren't infectious, merely that you aren't currently dying (from AIDS), and that you are a lot LESS infectious.
This is still a good thing. It just wouldn't be some miracle cure.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Monday June 01 2015, @10:44AM
It's actually a tougher problem for the virys. It already has evolved to turn X on. The test was a substance that blocks X. Getting around it would be like you remove the handles from the tap and your dog learns to put them back on.
I believe the idea is to use the drug to cure the patient of AIDS in a sterile setting, then they can stop the drug and send them home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @01:22PM
Or until the virus is wiped out. Remember smallpox? Me neither.
(Score: 2) by Joe on Monday June 01 2015, @10:35PM
The virus hasn't mutated a gene to turn X back on again
HIV doesn't have an effective mechanism to induce a specific mutation in a cellular gene. Sure, HIV can integrate next to a gene and affect its ability to be transcribed, but this is a non-specific process that only has limited preference for more "open" sections of the genome.
how can it not hinder the cell's performance?
It definitely will affect the ability of T cells to recognize an infection (c-Myc is important for the strength of signal through the TCR) and their ability to expand in number (dNTPs are needed for this).
Is this going to be a great antiviral for HIV?
No, but it may have some use as a short-term combination treatment with other antivirals (e.g. post-exposure prophylaxis).
- Joe