Anti-HIV Virus Developed 750
liam193 writes "Wired News is reporting that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory may have developed a virus that fights the HIV virus. According to the article, 'It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS. And that scares them.'"
Hey, babe, I got the cure... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this proves effective, I can anticipate people who'll get the treatment, then use that as another item on their list of "why you should have unsafe sex with me tonight". That may be a more entertaining way for more people to get "treated" than visiting their doctors, but HIV isn't the only nasty little bugger out there. We could end up with an epidemic of hepatitis and other STDs.
"I can't say now it won't make it worse," Arkin said.
Shouldn't Scare (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should this scare anybody? Alot of discoveries are just happenstance, or maybe it took somebody to think outside of the box, or maybe they are super geniuses [pioneernet.net]
My point is, if you can call it that, is that it doesn't always take a 50 Billion dollar military grant to come up with something to change the world. Ask the guy that invented the wheel.
Oh, wonderful. A new way to spread viral payloads (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't Scare (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds fine except (Score:2, Insightful)
Usual 'Wired' hype.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The facts: A pair of researchers have managed to adapt HIV to a virus which fights HIV. It's not their idea (as far as I can see), and so far they've only tested it in computer simulations (which are basically not to be trusted as a good model of the human immune system, trust me, I do computational biochem), also they've killed HIV in a petri dish.
Killing HIV in a petri dish is not new, there's quite a few things that do that.
I'm not dismissing the idea, but y'all better keep those champange bottles on ice for a few years until the in vivo studies have been conducted.
Really now... (Score:3, Insightful)
Developing a potential treatment for AIDS is, after all, relatively easy. Doing all of the studies necessary before releasing an engineered virus into the wild, now that's both difficult and expensive. Very difficult, and very expensive, in terms of highly dangerous controlled tests, especially over large amounts of time.
Is this a cure? (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is good news for people suffering AIDS. I would not put it in the cure department. The article did not say the anti-HIV virus irradicated HIV, just checked its mutation into AIDS. The results of calling such a treatment a cure would probably be an increased spread of AIDS.
Re:Scares them? (Score:2, Insightful)
We've heard of similar snake oils (Score:4, Insightful)
$200K is not enough to test that mutations will be stopped. And if HIV didn't mutate so tenaciously, we would have had a cure years ago.
Remember the "vaccine" based on a "crippled" HIV virus unable to cause the disease. Test it on monkeys and give it some time, and it turns out it "uncripples" itself by mutation once in a while. Ooops! Good thing that never made it to human trials! HIV sucks.
Just because a virus is artificial doesn't mean it's going to be controllable.
Re:Shouldn't Scare (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, the article specifically mentions that the 'anti-HIV' virus is essentially a euphemism for gene therapy. Sure, it only takes $200k to solve the problem when you don't count the research dollars spent getting you to the point where 'viral' gene therapy is possible.
Something about giants and shoulders comes to mind...
Re:Sounds fine except (Score:2, Insightful)
"in clinical trials and, after nearly three decades of research, no gene therapy method has been proven to work consistently."
they haven't got past testing in a petri dish - i think we have some way to go yet..
Virus Treatments - usually just talk (Score:2, Insightful)
All the experiments generally end up failing for one simple reason: your body has an immune system. And the immune system will attack the good virus and eliminiate it quickly.
This promising new HIV is special because it lacks the ability to kill white blood cells. Common sense says since it can't kill them, it'll be destroyed by them. Either that, or due to natural selection, the normal HIV that *can* kill will crowd out the "good" HIV.
Still isn't a cure (Score:3, Insightful)
So don't throw out the rubbers just yet.
arrogance and/or ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, some computer scientists discover biology and think they thought of things nobody ever thought of before. "Synthetic biology" is as old as molecular biology--that's what all those wonderful tools Arkin is playing around with were developed for. That's why he can buy the enzymes, chemicals, cell lines, DNA, and other components from dozens of vendors. Furthermore, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and other non-biologists, have been looking at biological problems for decades, so crossing disciplines is hardly new.
So, Arkin's general approach (as well as the general approach of the whole "synthetic biology" crowd) is nothing new. It is possible that he has come up with a specific new mechanism for interfering with HIV, but plenty of thought has gone into the careful design of similar schemes before and they have failed to work in humans.
Arkin may or may not have done some decent science in this work. But it foremost sounds like an attempt to grab attention. And that isn't nice: it not just detracts from other good research, in the case of proclaiming an HIV cure, it has the potential to hurt people.
Credit where it's due? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two people and a grad student, eh? So the student doesn't get any credit.
Sad.
I won't admonish you for not reading the article (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the point you are trying to make is that while this engineered virus may inhibit the effects of HIV, it does not destroy the HIV virus. People may become even more complacent about sex than they are now.
Moreover, what happens if either of the viruses mutate? You could potentially lose the protective effects of the engineered virus and find yourself infected with a new strain of HIV.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this a cure? (Score:2, Insightful)
It is potentially a cure for AIDS. It isn't a "cure" for HIV, at least not in the short or medium term. Depending on how you define words like "cure" or "disease" (which is the crux of the whole HIV-AIDS debate). AIDS is a syndrome, which means a constellation of symptoms and signs. This treatment could remove those entirely irrespective of HIV infection.
That is kind of a big initial assumption up there, though. Think I'll keep buying condoms.
False positives (Score:3, Insightful)
We would then need another way to test to see if you have any of the real thing, or just caught the unreal thing from someone else.
I wonder if it gets passed from Mother to child...usually aids doesn't, but there is still a pretty good chance.
Re:Scares them? (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a cure, either.
There's no question that the medical-industrial complex is motivated primarily by profit. It's disgusting. But anyone who thinks the the focus on treatments instead of a cure is motivated simply by greed... doesn't really understand just how challenging an actual cure would be to create. Even the best ideas out there (funded or not) would be very difficult to make work.
Re:Is this a cure? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't Scare (Score:4, Insightful)
All this... (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't have promiscuious sex.
And that's it. Nothing more than that.
But you'd have a hard time getting a message like that past PC liberals who seem to have taken up key positions of authority, and those tribes in Africa who believe the best way to cure aids is to have sex with a virgin. I wonder who told them that.
The other entry vector is blood transfer, but it's not exactly every-day practice (ie if you get AIDS through a blood transfer you're very unlikely to transfer your blood to somebody else before you start having symptoms).
So if people would simply keep it in their pants we could stop AIDS dead in its tracks within 5 years.
Re:Hepatitis cure may be here! (Score:5, Insightful)
HIV is a lentivirus, a subcategory of the retroviruses. HIV virions package two, negative strand RNA molecules. Within a cell, the HIV reverse transcriptase synthesizes cDNA that integrates into the host cell. The low replication fidelity of the reverse transcriptase is what accounts for HIV's incredible ability to rapidly escape from drug treatment and immune responses.
Unfortunately, the Wired article doesn't provide many scientific details. The idea is pretty creative, but there is a huge difference between simulating a cure (and even making one in a test tube) and finding a cure that works in animals. A few concerns off the top of my head:
1) Recombination between HIV and the treatment vector. Remember those two strands of RNA I talked about above? You can get mosaic viruses that resemble part of one virus and a second part of another. I'd be willing to bet that this is the 'it could make things worse' aspect mentioned at the botom of the article.
2) Any time you insert foreign DNA into the genomic DNA of cels (as would occur with this anti-HIV, if I understand it correctly), bad things can happen.
3) Attenuating (or weakening) HIV has been widely tested as a vaccine. And basically, it works, at least in monkeys. If you give monkeys an attenuated version of SIV (monkey AIDS virus), the monkeys are basically protected against full-blown SIV. So why isn't this a vaccine that is being used in people? Monkeys that have weakened immune systems, are young, are old, or just have plain bad luck eventually get sick and die...from the attenuated strain of the virus. In other words, the attenuated vaccine makes the monkeys sick. The 'anti-HIV' sounds like a different riff on the same theme, with the possible caveat that they are looking to use it on people who are already infected, unlike a vaccine which would be used on uninfected people to prevent infection.
Just my two cents. My cred: 8 years in HIV research, with a Ph.D. in it.
Let's be realistic (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect it took a lot more money and people than that -- let's not forget the billions of dollars and millions of man hours that went into the effort to effectively combat AIDS before this?
Often we hit upon success not by knowing to look, but by knowing where not to look based on the work of our predecessors.
- sm
Re:Hepatitis cure may be here! (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I HAVE actually heard a few people use the term virii when referencing multiple DIFFERENT viruses. But I have never seen it in any literature so it is probably just geek vernacular to an extent...
Re:Here we go... (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree.
1) Most of the human race IS NOT infected with HIV/AIDS. Talking about AIDS like it is the plague is overestimating it dramatically. AIDS simply isn't that infectious. For crying out loud, you have to exchange BLOOD or have sex with someone to get it, same as Ebola. The reason we don't have millions running around with Ebola is victims get symptoms/die right away (comparatively) and we QUARENTINE them. AIDS will never be as deadly as smallpox, diptheria, et.al. are/were. It's method of contagion is way too limiting.
2) There really is a substantial minority of the population that is monogamous (or celibate - consider \.). They are under almost no threat from AIDS. If the epidemic continues long enough, behaviors will change, or at least people exhibit non-monogamous behavior will be come more rare. Plain old evolution in action.
Assuming, of course, that we don't find a real cure/vaccine.
In short, you can imagine in a thousand years the human race having lost all technology for whatever reason - and still surviving. There might be much stronger taboos against non-monogamous behavior, and these ignorant future humans might have forgotten _WHY_ they have these taboos... but they won't be wiped out.
Actually, thinking cynically about it, you'd expect that after a while the local strong man would decide that the taboo wasn't working for him and he needed women more/more women than the geeky toolmaker did, so that taboo would have to become "toolmakers must be complete celibate, and chiefs must have all the women". Just human nature in action...
Unless all those strong men are genetically eliminated by the evolutionary effects of AIDS?? Finally, geeks rule!! (KIDDING!!! no, I don't want to see ANYONE die from AIDS, even jocks who deserve it.)
Re:Here we go... (Score:3, Insightful)
If biology hasn't changed over the last few years, it doesn't mean that at all.
The set of hosts will be reduced from now, though there are two things that would effectively get rid of HIV; have everyone die (no hosts), have everyone get checked frequently and use a tool to nuke it. Both have worked in the past for a variety of bacterial/viral diseases.
What this anti-HIV virus allows is for the HIV virus to exist without killing the host and to continue to be transmitted. Sure, it does not get the host forever...though that doesn't seem to be a problem for the sets of viruses that are spread each year. After all, when is the last time you had a STD test?
Re:Don't count your chickens ... (Score:1, Insightful)
The article mentions this. It also mentions the importance of computer simulations for this technique and other failures. As a molecular biologist you might enjoy reading the article.
Re:I volunteer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hey, babe, I got the cure... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is this scary? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not too worried about this. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you are suggesting that this might be used by terrorists to inflict damage on a world they don't like.
If so, the problem with this is that for the really damaging stuff - airborne spread viruses - the damage would almost inveitably be worse in the third world than in the Western world.
Comparatively, we've got the doctors, hospitals, and support systems to reduce the severity of a plague. The third world doesn't. Also, Western lifestyles are generally less plague succeptable - we have generally larger personal spaces, which reduces contagion rates. The population is generally literate, and tends to believe authorities when they issue directives on health and safety. The third world, by contrast, live in larger family units, don't generally have good disease theory awareness, and are prone to relying on traditional beliefs and remedies that are unlikely to be effective against this kind of pandemic.
Inflicting a highly contagious disease might be a "reasonable" thing for a radical environmental group that believes the human population is wildly excessive. It might also work for a nilhist or apocaleptic group. But most groups really have a vision for planet Earth that includes most of their relatives still alive. For those groups, particularly those from undeveloped countries, wildly contagious biological weapons don't make sense.
Now, if you could target your virus at one particular race, then your on VERY dangerous ground. There are any number of racial conflict around the world that participants might be tempted to settle by wiping out the other side entirely.
Re:Shouldn't Scare (Score:3, Insightful)
They already exist, only in reverse. Do a search for 'bareback parties' and prepare to be sickened. It's not conservatives who will be the death of homosexuals; it's homosexuals who will do themselves in. Why anyone would deliberately infect himself with HIV is beyond me.
Computer teaching... (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse than that, computer viruses don't evolve by themselves, but biological ones have that capability. A bad replication or mutation of that virus and we could have a new disease instead a new cure.
In the other hand, some vaccines already uses somewhat disabled diseases to cure them. And worked, and the worst not happened. If we have the opportunity to eliminate a for sure killer disease risking a not so likely future new disease, maybe the risk worths it.
Re:All this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Tell that to all the faithfully monogamous women infected by their tom-catting husbands, the otherwise virginal rape victims infected by their attackers, or the newborn children infected by their mothers. It isn't the frequency of the sex, but simply whether the other person is infected. Once can do it.
The other entry vector is blood transfer, but it's not exactly every-day practice (ie if you get AIDS through a blood transfer you're very unlikely to transfer your blood to somebody else before you start having symptoms).
You don't know a damn thing about how addicts use heroin, do you? (They routinely re-use each others' IV needles.) Or about how quickly HIV symptoms appear. (It's commonly dormant but communicable for years.)
"Insightful"? Please don't mod while drunk.
Re:Hey, babe, I got the cure... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still isn't a cure (Score:4, Insightful)
And while you will still have HIV, it would reduce the amount of it in the blood stream (current drugs can get it down below 40 copies/mL blood, while untreated there can be millions of copies in a mL of blood), which reduces the risk of transmission, sexual or otherwise. You still wouldn't want to go around having unprotected sex, but it would help prevent transmission through accidental blood contact (not uncommon for those in medical professions).
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what's scary is that they've developed a treatment that spreads itself just like a virus, along with HIV. What that means is that once it's in the wild, it's gonna spread like any other virus and, probably, mutate like any other virus.
That's an ethical conundrum from hell - is it moral to infect people with a virus of unknown long-term effects that cures a known killer disease?
Re:Ebola-Cold. (Score:2, Insightful)
The Reston strain is airborne, but is not fatal to humans. The problem, however, is that Reston is very similar to the Sudan and Zaire strains, so airborne mutations are not out of the question for the other strains. Additionally, at late stages when R & Z are extremely infectious, coughing will spew droplets of blood, which if care is not taken will infect others who breath them in.
Some information taken from here [ntu.edu.tw]
See also: Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
AIDS in Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You've gotta be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a cure for Small Cellular Cancer? (Score:3, Insightful)
They couldn't even put it into remission..it's just a countdown to death...and all the Doc's could do is slow it down abit.
Re:Shouldn't Scare (Score:3, Insightful)
HIV would be a very poor choice of diseases to use for terrorism purposes. It's difficult to become infected with, takes a long time to do any damage, and with current treatments is not nearly as lethal as many other diseases.
And your nonsense about "fundamentalist religious groups" is just FUD. There are crazy people in every segment of the population; religion has nothing to do with it.
Scares them because (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:children of HIV positive couple (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence, a seropositive male almost always produces seronegative offspring, assuming the mother is not infected. It would be unusual for a fetus ever to acquire HIV infection directly from the father. The developing embryo simply does not have the CD4+ receptor that HIV latches on to, until much later in development.
HIV transmission is not like Mendelian genetics.Re:You've gotta be kidding me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about a cure for Small Cellular Cancer? (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, for those not in the know, the small cell lung cancer (80% of those affected are smokers) is the worst kind you can get. Due to the types of cells that replicate out of control, it almost immediately spreads to the rest of the body, depositing in other organs. If you're lucky, it'll take up to four years to hit the brain. If not, it'll take less than four months.
Here's a link [webmd.com] to a good description.
They've made all kinds of progress in the last 20 years with other cancers, like Leukemia [cancerconsultants.com], but the small cell lung cancer seems to be a much more difficult beast to tackle.
Anti-HIV Virus (Score:2, Insightful)
Smallpox killed a _lot_ of people.
AIDs kills no one. It makes it possible for another disease to eliminate you, any other disease. The only interesting thought that I get out of this is simply, if we're going to attempt to cure AIDs by gene therapy, we should take a look at therapeutically altering the immune system to make it AIDs capable instead of its current state, in which it is incapable of dealing with it.
AIDs is not unique in its status of being a virus that our bodies cannot fight or loses the battle with, several disease are like that.
I think it would be awesome if we could derive a virus gene therapy that would make our immune systems disease proof. Not eternal life by any stretch of the imagination, but losing life to viruses is horrible, especially when this life stealing virus' means of propagation is our own...
Just some thoughts...
Re:Ebola-Cold. (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine HIV spreading by air.