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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [northwestern.edu]

[Abstract]: http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1004864 [plos.org]

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