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Gene Transfer Immunizes Against Monkey HIV Analog
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 19, 2009 11:58 AM
from the good-to-live-in-the-21st-century dept.
from the good-to-live-in-the-21st-century dept.
Al writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have immunized monkeys against the simian immunodeficiency virus, the animal model that is closest to HIV. They did so by shuttling a gene into the monkeys' muscles, making the muscle cells produce antibody-like molecules that work against SIV. With both SIV and HIV, the chameleon-like mutability of the virus's surface changes so quickly that most antibodies made by the immune system are soon rendered ineffective. Philip Johnson and colleagues designed DNA sequences for two antibodies known to be effective against SIV. They used antibody-like molecules, called immunoadhesins, in which the functional part of an antibody is fused with a more stable section of another antibody. The same approach could be used to deliver antibodies that are effective against HIV, but which the body doesn't normally produce."
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Submission: Gene Transfer Immunizes Against Monkey HIV by Anonymous Coward
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that's good news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:that's good news.... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm waiting to see what they can do with Monkey HIV Digital.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You mean SIV NEGATIVE monkeys who are engaging in unsafe behaviors (unprotected monkey sex, sharing heroin needles, and participating in HIV related research as test subjects.) Vaccines usually don't cure you once infected (rabies is a limited exception), I suppose this one might, but so far it's only been demonstrated to prevent infection, not eliminate after infection.
Re:that's good news.... (Score:5, Funny)
unprotected monkey sex, sharing heroin needles, and participating in HIV related research as test subjects
I miss college.
Parent
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Re:that's good news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Monkeys, write your congressman!
Parent
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Monkeys, hurl feces at your congressman!
Re: (Score:2)
Congresschimp?
Mozilla's might get some flak from feminists groups for this. It highlighted Congresschimp as being spelled incorrectly, so I opened the context menu to find out what spellcheck thought I was trying to say. After 'Congress chimp' and 'Congress-chimp' is 'Congresswomen' and 'Congresswoman'.
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Monkeys, hurl feces at our congressmen!
What happens when... (Score:2)
We already have diseases like Scarlet Fever that cause the body to attack itself. In the case of Scarlet Fever, a strep infection (like strep throat) causes the body to attack the the valves in the heart because the protien in the valves is similar to the one on the bacteria.
Now you want to start bonding things to stuff and seeing what you can get it to attack... Why am I seeing cancer, kidney, and liver problems in the futures of patients treated with this stuff??
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Don't virii evolve extremely quickly? (Score:3, Interesting)
It would seem to me like this would maybe work for a year or so, and then there'd be some new strain that these antibodies might not hit.
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Re:Don't virii evolve extremely quickly? (Score:5, Interesting)
What would be best is if the treatment is cheap enough to administer in Africa (and if it's really effective, than that can be relative since I can see a lot of people and countries giving more money for something this big). Stopping AIDS in Africa could easily be the biggest medical achievement this century.
Parent
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Good luck with that.
You are talking about a continent where fuck twads A.K.A. Anit-vaccines and woo crowd, have the governments convinced that vaccine are a western evil and the one should use natural remedies, like beating them selves with certain type of plants.
Hell some places spread the lies that condoms are a western evil.
Many Islam areas in Africa claims it's all the woman's fault. Of course, they also won't let the women do anything about it, like use a condom.
Fuck. twads.
Re:Don't virii evolve extremely quickly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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This advance is interesting in that it causes the body to produce an an
Re:Don't virii evolve extremely quickly? (Score:5, Funny)
'Some places' like Vatican City?
Do it right kids, use a condom! [brainflower.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the Catholic church doesn't help, either.
Because obviously, dying of AIDS as a pious loser is better than using rubber when you have sex.
Re:Don't virii evolve extremely quickly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some groups are using their own pathetic morality to suppress Africans who otherwis don't know any better.
And how bad would the AIDS epidemic be (in Africa or elsewhere) if people followed "oppressive" Christian teachings like keeping the sex in marriage (I'm no expert on Islam, but as far as I know, they too at least theoretically believe the same)? Granted, even many professed Christians don't follow those teachings, but that doesn't make the principle itself less effective. It would also have a profoundly positive effect on the welfare system, and abortion would very nearly be a non-issue. But nobody wants to talk about it, because we don't want to look like we gave in to those right-wing wackos, depsite the fact that there are huge benefits and nobody has ever shown me an actual drawback to it.
Mock and flame away. I'll pay attention when somebody proposes an actual drawback to monogamy (and no, Sarah Palin's daughter is not one. That again is an example of a problem of not embracing monogamy. I want somebody to point out a disadvantage of monogamy itself).
Parent
Re:Don't virii evolve extremely quickly? (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been preaching abstinence and monogamy for thousands of years. I don't see any evidence of it having worked.
People are people. They make mistakes from time to time even if they are trying to follow one of these prescriptive, backward religions.
Combine that with the willful spreading of ignorant, superstitious beliefs in Africa and you have a monumental disaster.
It's time the straight-laced preachers of this world and their arm-chair proponents looked at the reality of human nature and thought of something compatible with it that might help instead of berating and condescending.
Parent
Whoa there, reporter cowboy. (Score:5, Informative)
I spent many years in medical school doing research work on viruses, including work with SIV. This article is very optimistic in some of its summaries. HIV and SIV are qualitatively different in the extent of "hypervariability" in their surface proteins. It is generally accepted to be "easier" to create antibodies to SIV, which has been done for many years.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7865316?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed [nih.gov]
The technique described is very interesting, don't get me wrong, and I hope it works. However, there are *already* many techniques that appear to immunize against this HIV analog, which do not work for human HIV. The two are significantly different.
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It may be as simple as, "These techniques that work for SIV don't work for HIV. Maybe this new one does work." But, yes, I'd appreciate it if researchists didn't give the false impression that this is the first breakthrough in this area, much like I'd prefer that embryonic-stem-cell articles point out that nearly all breakthroughs with stem cells have come from "adult" stem cells, and that cord-blood stem cells are also known as "adult" stem cells. This kind of transparency would mitigate or eliminate th
Re:Whoa there, reporter cowboy. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Another cure? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not inject the antibody directly ? Why do we need the body to produce it naturally ? If production is the concern, why not inject the gene in bacterias and have then produce the antibody.
There's probably a good reason but I don't know it.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
End run around non-protective responses (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm kind of seeing this technique as an end-run around the "decoy" problem. It's been well known for some time that, at least in the general population, the antibody response against HIV tends to get targeted towards features which are non-protective or hyper-mutable.
However, over time we've come to discover a very small number of patients who have unusual resistance to progression. Some of these possess receptor mutations, some have unusual HLA types, while others were merely infected with what appeared to be somewhat milder variants of the virus.
However, in a few rare cases, we discovered patients with antibodies that were unusually effective at dealing with HIV's evasions. Often these antibodies had "weird" features -- things like floppy sections of their variable regions that allowed them to reach down to contact hidden epitopes, and other rare features. While they offered hope that an effective antibody response was not impossible, at the same time there really much chance of designing an antigen in such a way to get the general population to produce these unusual variants.
So, what this work has apparently done, is skip the entire vaccination step. Clone out the sequence for those particularly effective antibody variants, get your target organism to express them directly. However HIV may adapt to the new antibodies, as long as you can find one single person, somewhere in the world with an effective antibody response, it can be duplicated elsewhere.
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floppy sections of their variable regions that allowed them to reach down to contact hidden epitopes
Best. Euphemism. Ever.
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floppy sections of their variable regions that allowed them to reach down to contact hidden epitopes
Best. Euphemism. Ever.
Indeed! This euphemism is SO good, it has the potential to cure AIDS!
Waste of money (Score:2, Funny)
In just a few years we'll be forced to upgrade to Monkey HIV Digital, which will make Monkey HIV Analog look like crap anyway.
Re:Waste of money (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Waste of money (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, you're probably one of those people that insist on spending a fortune on glass syringes with exotic wood plungers and gold-plated needles, because they feel healthier.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Whoa I'm not letting a doctor come anywhere near me with something called a "Monster Needle" no matter how much better he says the fidelity is.
I think (Score:2, Insightful)
Great news for those who can't walk upright... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
This is some sort of reference to George Bush's arguably incomplete ancestral path from monkey to human, right?
I am not a sciency guy break it down for me please (Score:4, Funny)
Even more interesting HIV news (Score:5, Interesting)
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Good news for monkeys (Score:2, Funny)
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(of course, he still can't pitch)
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Monkeys are safe again... but for how long? (Score:2)
Antibodies against HIV are extremely hard to get right. For example, Dan Barouch [google.com] has kept a group of vaccinated monkeys with an SIV/HIV hybrid alive for years... except for one whose virus mutated in just the wrong way. Based on the limited information in the article, it seems like the U Penn study works similarly.
P. Johnson (Score:2)
I was hoping it was this Phillip Johnson [wikipedia.org]. That would have been a real twist.
Re: (Score:2)
What's that, death?
Seriously, other than never being near it, I'm not aware of any 100% effective immunization against HIV. Which is about as useful, physically speaking, as having a 100% effective immunization against bullets when fired from a gun: if I'm already dead, it's not going to make things worse, and if it misses me, I'm okay, too.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)