Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV

stemceller writes to tell us that a team of researchers at the University of Alberta claims to have discovered a gene capable of blocking HIV thereby preventing the onset of full blown AIDS. "Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus. 'When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. "This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus.'"

Holy crap!

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Does anyone know if gene therapy has progressed far enough to actually apply this to cell DNA? Is this actually a real cure for AIDS?

Re:Holy crap!

[ScentCone (795499)]

Does anyone know if gene therapy has progressed far enough to actually apply this to cell DNA? Is this actually a real cure for AIDS

Sure. They just use a mostly-dead other virus to permanently change your genetic code. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Re:Holy crap!

[jollyreaper (513215)]

Sure. They just use a mostly-dead other virus to permanently change your genetic code. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

If it was all dead, we could go through its pockets for spare change.

Re:

[Telvin_3d (855514)]

Well how much more wrong can it get than AIDs? I mean, what could happen, it kills you a little faster? If they have even 50/50 survival/success rate people will line up for this.

Re:Holy crap!

[harry666t (1062422)]

Believe me or not, but there /are/ things that are worse than death...

Re:

[budgenator (254554)]

We already have the gene, we just need to make sure it gets turned on to stop our cells from make HIV and possibley other retroviruses

Re:Holy crap!

[leenks (906881)]

Isn't getting turned on what causes most of the problem in the first place ? :o

More seriously...

[DrYak (748999)]

The good part is that HIV attacks the white blood cells, i.e.: cells that aren't fixed in an organ, but that freely mobile in the blood stream and are produced by the bone marrow (which can also be injected freely in the blood stream and will home on its own to the bones).

So one possibility would be to :
- get some progenitor cells from the marrow
- do the recombination under laboratory controlled conditions using whatever methodology seems to be the best (not forced to use viruses that can still replicate other methods could be acceptable)
- select those progenitor cells where the recombination happened in the most optimal way (the new gene did got indeed inserted, and got inserted at a correct place where it won't cause cancer or otherwise disturb the function of gene that were present before the recombination)
- inject those modified cells into the patient bloodstream and let them go back to the bone marrow
- those celles produce a new generation of HIV-resistant lymphocytes.

As we are not forced to use virus inside a patient but can do the transformation under controlled conditions, and as we have a lot more knowledge about human genome, we might manage to diminish the risk of the transposons continuing to jump around and damage important genes (compared for example to what was found with Monsanto's GM corn).

Risks of rejection may be lowered compared to what happens with Cystic-fibrosis gene therapy, because :
- no virus inside the patient body and less foreign material : less likely to trigger a immune response.
- cells are only modified using the new gene, no other virus-cycle replicating proteins : less likely to be recognized as 'foreign'
- patient with an active AIDS are immuno-compromised anyway so the risk of immunological reject are lowered anyway.

Also, unlike other gene therapies, the effect of that one are very likely to be permanent because we have access to the progenitor cells that produce the lymphocytes. Whereas with CF gene therapy, the virus is inhaled and affects cells on the surface of the respiratory tract : mostly differentiated cells that won't divide anymore, once they are dead a new exposition to the virus is necessary to produce a new crop of modified cells, hence the risk of rejection increase with each exposition. In CF, the progenitor cells aren't easily available.

Re:

[westcoaster004 (893514)]

Actually, German researchers have reported [wired.com] that DNA vaccines may be deliverable via a tattoo gun. Whether they use a plasmid or a virus of whatever sort (not that deadly really) to deliver the DNA is still another question, but doing it effectively on a rather large scale would become feasible with this technique.

Re:Holy crap!

[insertwackynamehere (891357)]

So in other words unless we progress in this field... we won't progress in this field? How insightful. Good job mods.

Re:Holy crap!

[OeLeWaPpErKe (412765)]

*sigh* he's saying that this is one thing we might change on the program. A patch for the human code, say.

We only have a small problem ... the program is stored in a few trillion copies (all of which need to be changed), of extremely complex molecules (which we can't reliable modify (we can't even reliably read them) even when we have only 1 outside of the body).

Let's say it's this way. We have a patch for a flaw in your windows. Except it's on paper. And the computers won't boot until the patch is applied, so we need to take out the hard drive and *manually* change the bits on it. We have an electron microscope that *sometimes* has been used to change some random bits on the harddrive, which has once or twice resulted in a "mostly" correct change. Oh yes, and we have a billion computers, all of which still need to be operational after the change.

That's where we are. We know what to change (or so we hope), it's just ... "a bit" hard to get to the bits.

Re:Holy crap!

[gripen40k (957933)]

You are totally right here, as it stands it would be nearly impossible to completely 'cure' someone with HIV. However, I think what might be more important is that we could potentially be able to treat human embryos while there are only a few cells that need changing. These changes would hopefully be carried through as they replicate.

I shouldn't have to point out the multitude of issues brought up by creating a new 'race' of humans that are immune to HIV; there are so many other things that could go wrong with slice-and-dicing the human genome that we probably won't see the tangible results of this early experiment for many, many years to come. Despite this, it is a reassuring step forward in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Re:Holy crap!

[zippthorne (748122)]

Fortunately, we also know of a virus which suppresses the immune system...

Re:

[CommunistHamster (949406)]

Moderated +1 reciprocal.

Re:Holy crap!

[mckniffen (983873)]

That research lab at Alberta is know for releasing under-researched findings before complete testing is applied. I also want to point out that it would be near impossible to make anything but a vaccine out of this discovery. So people already having aids with be out of luck, regardless of what TFA says.

Re:

[snl2587 (1177409)]

So people already having aids with be out of luck, regardless of what TFA says.

Very true. Unfortunately, the mechanisms of full-blown AIDS run too deep, so that even expelling AIDS would still leave the body in a likely incurable state. Still, that would certainly prolong the lives of those diagnosed with AIDS, so it's still a worthy cause.

Re:Holy crap!

[Ctrl-Z (28806)]

Oh, I see. So making a vaccine which can help protect the 99.4% of humanity that is not infected is not nearly as exciting as a cure for the 0.6% of humanity living with HIV?

Re:Holy crap!

[garett_spencley (193892)]

No one is understating the importance of a vaccine, and should one be developed it will be a day to celebrate. However, a cure would be more exciting.

Why ?

Because a cure will "save" the 0.6% of the population AND leave the remaining 99.4% of the population with the peace of mind of knowing that in the unfortunate event that they do contract HIV they are not completely fsck'd.

Of course the best scenario would be both a vaccine and a cure.

Re:

[corsec67 (627446)]

And then what percentage of that 99.4% is a) going to get HIV, and b) is at risk for HIV?

Re:

[ucblockhead (63650)]

Yes. Because we already know how to help protect 99.4% of humanity that is not infected. It's called a "condom". It's not perfect, obviously, but it has greatly reduced the spread of HIV in most western countries.

Besides, a complete cure doesn't just help that 0.6%...it also helps that 99.4% to the extent that they are at risk of getting the disease.

Re:

[s7uar7 (746699)]

If you cure the 0.6% then it's going to be pretty difficult for the other 99.4% to catch it.

Re:Holy crap!

[mikael (484)]

That's nothing new to the industry - I was watching an old Horizon documentary from the 1980's on genetic research - one of the interviewed researched stated that "Every time there is a new discovery in genetic research, there is always the assumption that this is the final piece of the jigsaw put into place. Invariably this is proved to be not the case." There is always another receptor/gene/protein found that has a moderating effect on whatever interaction is being studied.

Re:Holy crap!

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

That research lab at Alberta is know for releasing under-researched findings before complete testing is applied.

Is it? The parent is "insightful" for making unsubstantiated accusations of acodemic impropriety with their research, yet provides no links or another kind of support, yet it's "insightful"?

Re:Holy crap!

[gad_zuki! (70830)]

Hi, you must be new here. Heck just saying "Bill Gates is the devil" is at least +1 insightful.

btw, Bill Gates is the devil.

How to filter low impact science

[digitalderbs (718388)]

I'm always suspicious whenever I see ostensibly "high-impact" summaries that link to press releases of work that is either unpublished or published in low impact journals. In this case, I haven't looked up the impact factor of the journal PLoS pathogens (article [plospathogens.org]), but I do biophysics research on HIV and I've never heard of this journal. As a useful general rule, science articles shouldn't appear on here (and waste everyone's time) unless they've been submitted through a peer-reviewed journal (not the case here), and I think they should hit high-impact journals like Science, Nature, Cell, PNAS, ...

Re:

[ceifeira (1230772)]

All PLoS journals are peer reviewed [plos.org]. Impact factor for 2006 was around 6.0 [plos.org] (based on 6 months of publications, likely to increase). Most PLoS's are second-tier publications behind the usual suspects. Your ignorance of this journal does not constitute invalidity of research that is published in it; it merely points out, well, your ignorance.

Re:How to filter low impact science

[Rhabarber (1020311)]

PLoS Pathogens currently has an ISI Impact Factor of 6.1 [plos.org].
This is not comparable to to Nature, Science or PLoS Biology but for a specialized journal it's quite high.

The good thing about the PLoS Journals is that they rank quite high _and_ the articles are open accessible by day one. This means that an ordinary slashdot user (not sitting in a rich lab or library that has spent truckloads of money to access the most important journals in its field) has the chance to _read_ the f#@*ing primary resarch article.

As said, the paper is here [plosjournals.org] although the site is down for maintenance at the moment ;).

Re:How to filter low impact science

[PCM2 (4486)]

As a useful general rule, science articles shouldn't appear on here (and waste everyone's time)

You seem to have a misguided interpretation of the role and purpose of Slashdot...

Re:

[ruinevil (852677)]

It should be peer-reviewed at least... Nicer journals can request better experts in the peer review process, who understand the methods, hypotheses, and may point to some other papers that go against or help the findings. Plospathogens is an new open-access peer-review journal. It might be good in the future, but not right now.

Premature Congratulations

[TheMeuge (645043)]

There are a lot of things that block HIV in cell culture.

Yet after literally hundreds of millions in financing, there isn't yet any real curative treatment. Why? Because HIV is a retrovirus with one of the worst polymerases known. It's just so bad at copying itself, that any treatment applied in-vivo acts only as a selective pressure.

Same is the case for HIV vaccines - even though there ARE conserved regions of the virus, they aren't very good targets, and the ones that are good targets are too antigenically fluid to be targeted.

In the end, my opinion as a virologist is that stopping the spread of HIV, and continuing to develop a larger palette of inhibitors are the proper solutions to the HIV problem. If we treat the people who have been infected, and don't infect any more... HIV will not be a problem after 2 generations.

Re:Premature Congratulations

[KillerBob (217953)]

In the end, my opinion as a virologist is that stopping the spread of HIV, and continuing to develop a larger palette of inhibitors are the proper solutions to the HIV problem. If we treat the people who have been infected, and don't infect any more... HIV will not be a problem after 2 generations.

You'd be a good person to ask this one of, then.... is there any truth to the theory that over time, humans will develop a natural immunity to HIV in the same way that cats have largely developped immunity to Feline Leukemia and FIV?

Re:Premature Congratulations

[TheMeuge (645043)]

It's possible... but ironically it's likely to happen if Africa continues to receive inadequate quantities of drugs. You see, evolution only works this way, when the mutations you're looking for provide a reproductive advantage. If we can treat HIV-infected patients in such a way that allows them to successfully reproduce (and modern medications taken appropriately already do), then there is no selective pressure for such a resistance to develop. Even if a minor selective pressure does exist, it's not significant enough to cause a shift in dominant genes rapidly enough to provide us with natural immunity before our knowledge of biology will surpass the ability of HIV to fight back.

Re:

[TubeSteak (669689)]

In the end, my opinion as a virologist is that stopping the spread of HIV, and continuing to develop a larger palette of inhibitors are the proper solutions to the HIV problem. If we treat the people who have been infected, and don't infect any more... HIV will not be a problem after 2 generations.

Good luck implementing that plan in Africa.
Even with US & UN aids money they can't afford to provide, to everyone, the generics made by countries that have broken US pharma patents.

Re:Holy crap!

[Cadallin (863437)]

No, It is not even potentially a cure for AIDS. It does look like it might offer a route for immunization, or at least increased resistance. This would still be an incredible breakthrough, but it is important to keep perspective on what the realities are.

Always Remember: AIDS is Deadly. It is not a "chronic condition." It is a death sentence, maybe it'll take 5, even 10 years to kill some small group of victims, for many it is as few as 6-24 months. Way, way to many young people somehow manage to remain ignorant of this.

Press releases are useless.

[ruinevil (852677)]

Obviously our bodies makes TRIM22 to fight against retroviruses already, and it's not good enough. I know that interferon, which activates TRIM22, was an early drug in the fight against HIV.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WXR-4KCGHS0-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=f922f45405809276e69864f01d98ef4c [sciencedirect.com]

According to this study, TRIM22 is one of most inef

Re:Holy crap!

[cpricejones (950353)]

No. TRIM5alpha has been in the news for quite some time. It's a gene carried by old world monkeys that prevent them from getting HIV. The human version of TRIM5alpha has a mutation which does not protect us from HIV but does protect us from other types of viruses (it's thought). There are experiments that show that TRIM5alpha prematurely disassembles the capsid cores of HIV particles as they are infecting cells. These cores contain the viral RNA as it is being made into viral DNA for insertion into the host cell genome.

So you can imagine the interest in TRIM genes and proteins. Just Pubmed TRIM5alpha and you'll see many articles. TRIM22 is probably a homologue of TRIM5alpha. The article does not seem to mention anything about TRIM5alpha probably because it makes it seem like their work has already been done. See below for the original finding:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14985764?ordinalpos=110&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum [nih.gov]

Can you say "Nobel Prize"?

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

I'd be interested to know if this explains the phenomenon, discovered a few years ago, that some rare individuals seem to be immune to HIV despite repeatedly engaging in unsafe sex.

Re:Can you say "Nobel Prize"?

[TheMeuge (645043)]

They are only immune to one of the subtypes of the virus, due to the mutations of the cellular receptor that the virus uses for entry. There are a variety of strains of the virus that will still infect them, albeit not nearly as productively as those without these mutations.

Delta 32 gene marker is a natural immunity already

[retech (1228598)]

People who survived the Plague in Europe either did not encounter it or almost universally had a genetic anomaly commonly referred to as the delta-32 marker. Their ancestors survive other diseases because of this causing what amounts to an odd protein binding issue on the cellular level. Those people are also naturally immune to HIV.

Read more:
wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
pbs [pbs.org]

Just finished Jurassic Park

[Chabil Ha' (875116)]

'cause I hadn't watched it in a long time, but Ian says something interesting: Life will always find a way. Meaning, there will always be a tension between our genes trying to evolve out of disease, and the disease out-evolving our adaptations by employing its own. I hate to sound cynical, but even if this were a cure, HIV will find another way or be supplanted by another disease more powerful.

it still doesn't work

[wasteur (889134)]

As the article says, the researchers are going to find out why this gene isn't already stopping HIV infection. I.e. back to square one. This is not a cure, it's an interesting in vitro study. HIV is hard to fix because it evolves so quickly in an individual, in response to the immune system and anti-retrovirals. It appears already to have evolved around this gene's activity in vivo. Not sure why this is a headline.

Until the Virus Mutates

[Veramocor (262800)]

And it always mutates.

It's called...

[Robber Baron (112304)]

A team of researchers at the University of Alberta claims to have discovered a gene capable of blocking HIV thereby preventing the onset of full blown AIDS.

It's called trilevinassalone.

Re:But how will it be used?

[TheMeuge (645043)]

Can we please stop the trolling?

Science is expensive. Large-scale high-throughput biomedical science is even more expensive. Clinical trials are EVEN MORE expensive. Where do you expect that the money for all of that comes from.

It seems that on Slashdot, the prevalent opinion is that we should all get whatever we want, whenever we want, for free (or nearly free). That's not how the real world works. Many scientists are working on important biological pathways... but it is largely with the financing of the pharmaceutical companies, that they are able to translate their discoveries into drugs.

Could we improve the system? Of course.
Should we ban consumer-targeting pharmaceutical advertisement? Absolutely.
Should we heavily regulate drug companies? Certainly.

But one thing we should be careful about doing, is assuming that all biomedical science will be miraculously well-financed if drug companies disappear.

Re:But how will it be used?

[xenocide2 (231786)]

Worry not. This breakthrough was found at the publicly financed University of Alberta. You can keep on crowing about how much Medicine costs to Discover, but the pharma companies spend a lot on computer generated bees and animated restless legs as they do research, and even more on direct marketing to physicians.

If you read the last paragraph of the article (I know, "Read? this is slashdot!") they mention who actually paid for this. In the name of public education, I'll duplicate it for you:

Barr's research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. The findings are published in the Public Library of Science Pathogens.

.

Your hypothesis that the current system is well financed by pharma companies may be incorrect...

Even more premature

[TheMeuge (645043)]

But it's not a treatment! It's just a couple of pieces of data.

It's a in-vitro study of one tiny aspect of one pathway that MAY be helpful in TRYING to create a treatment.

If a cure is a 20-layer cake, these people have created a recipe for the syrup for the cream, for one of the layers. According to you, that negates the need to buy ingredients, find out the recipes for the other layers, hire the chef, or actually make the cake!

Is healthcare a right?

[TheMeuge (645043)]

Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head. But consider this - your argument essentially boils down to saying that healthcare is a human right. And for those who are about to spew bile at me for saying that, please read the rest of the post.

Let's compare healthcare to food, for instance. In the civilized world, it's a nearly universal agreement, that people should have enough food to survive. Hence, the different forms of welfare programs, food stamps, etc... We provide people who are poor, with enough money or money equivalents, to obtain sufficient sustenance. We don't, however, provide them with 5-course chef-prepared meals every night.

The problem is, however, that people who flame the government and "corporations" for not providing medication for everyone, are essentially suggesting that we provide full healthcare for everyone... which equates to giving out filet mignon welfare, given the costs of many cutting edge drugs and treatments. Now I don't have a problem with the concept of this "filet mignon welfare"... except that I cannot personally afford it... and neither can you.

So as a society, we will at some point have to face the realization that we cannot provide the highest quality healthcare to every member of our society, no matter how hard we try. I wish I had the solution to this problem, but I do not. If I come up with one, I promise to share it with the world, as there is nothing more I'd like to see, than a world where the only diseases people die of, are ones for which cures and treatments haven't been discovered yet. But that's not a world of today, nor do I envision such a world in the near future.

Re:Is healthcare a right?

[Pendersempai (625351)]

In that case, perhaps filet mignon was a bad example because it is not expensive enough. At some point, people die. Usually, that death can be delayed with medical care. But the further you delay it, the more money it costs, and the cost progression is exponential or perhaps hyperbolic to infinity. So no matter what, eventually you have to pull the plug because you can't afford the next stage of treatment. It's sad, and hopefully someday when our consciousness has been transplanted into circuitry that will not be the case, but until then, we're going to have to continue to put prices on human's lives.

Re:Is healthcare a right?

[KiahZero (610862)]

You've got an unstated assumption that you're not addressing: that scarce resources should be awarded to those with more resources. It's tempting to treat this as a given, since it's a premise of an unregulated market, but it's not a necessity.

If healthcare resources are so scarce that we are unable to effectively treat all members of society, then society must decide how to distribute those resources. As I stated above, it's not justice to award those scarce resources to only one class of people. In the original position, one would likely decide to allocate them either based on an attribute other than wealth, or more likely, allocate them in a random distribution (i.e., if there are two people with terminal cancer, and society can only afford to cure one of them, there's a coin flip).

I also wonder whether you've considered how much of that scarcity is based on scarcity of physical goods, labor, etc., and how much is artificial scarcity that could be changed by changing societal structure. For instance, if a pharmaceutical company can be compensated so that there is incentive to research new life-saving drugs, while amortizing the cost of said drugs over the whole population, rather than just on a small number of sufferers, it may no longer be the case that the sufferers are forced to compete for access to their medication.

Re:But how will it be used?

[sumdumass (711423)]

It will be both. AIDS medicine has a reduced patent allowance on them. They also have a expedited approval system. You can thank Reagan and Clinton years for that. So while yes, it would likely be patented away, it would only be so for a fraction of the time other drugs enjoy.

But that doesn't mean it would be out of the reach of the poor either. Every poor person has access to medical in the US through welfare SCHIP and several other programs. There might be a very small amount of people who don't. This leaves the not so poor who don't have insurance and there is two ways to attack that. The first is all major drug company has a medication assistance program where they provide drugs at reduced costs or ever free of charge to people having problems affording it. The draw back is that you can't buy a new boat and claim the payment makes it so you can't afford it. The other way is SSI. AIDS would be counted as a disabling disease and in most every situation you would be eligible for some coverage under SSI.

That of course is US centric, but any country other then the US has the ability to get the same deals and programs going. The berne convention has provisions for violating patents in emergencies, Canada has pulled this exemption to make generic ciprocal or whatever it was during the anthrax scare. I suppose that if any other country couldn't provide the medication for it's population and it was a problem in their country, it could be seen as an emergency. But I don't think it would be advisable to manipulate it too much.