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Science

Accidental Discovery Could Lead to Cure for AIDS Virus 51

Posted by timothy from the probably-a-nice-raise-too dept.
sydlexius writes "A press release from Sandia tells of the discovery of niobium HPA, a chemical that bonds to viruses. Many scientists have been interested in the properties of various HPAs (heteropolyanions), however this is the first such case that is stable in basic and neutral solutions. The Albuquerque Tribune covers the story here. For subscribers of Science Magazine, you can find an article in this month's issue (Abstract)."
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Accidental Discovery Could Lead to Cure for AIDS Virus More

Accidental Discovery Could Lead to Cure for AIDS Virus

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  • some goofs (Score:1, Informative)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 )
    One does not have AIDS, they have HIV. AIDS is a condition resulting from HIV - the inability to defend one's immune system. Hence, when one has HIV, viruses so incredibly weak can infect the person because of the lack of immune system.

    Hence, this drug blocks those viruses, not HIV itself.

    • Re:some goofs (Score:3, Informative)

      by YaRness ( 237159 )
      it says clearly in the article it would bond to the aids virus (yes, they should say human immunodeficiency virus), stopping the spread of the virus.

      "Once such compounds bind with an AIDs virus, the virus is no longer capable of entering a cell to damage it."
    • HIV is also a virus and the body looses so much trying to fight HIV off that it becomes easy prey for other viruses that it could usually fight off.

    • Re:some goofs (Score:5, Informative)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2002 @05:00PM (#4159500) Homepage Journal
      Parent isn't a troll, just doesn't quite have the facts straight. ;)

      More accurate to say that AIDS is a disease resulting from HIV infection. HIV is itself a virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) which attacks the key cells of the human immune system, leaving it open to all kinds of infection -- viral, bacterial, fungal, and parasitical. Drugs which fight these opportunistic infections can (and do) help AIDS patients quite a bit, but it is indeed possible -- and more useful in the long run -- to develop drugs which fight HIV directly. We have plenty such drugs, but none of them work as well or as long as they should. This may be the best of the bunch, if we're lucky.

      [rant] I'm consistently amazed at the basic lack of understanding of infectious disease displayed any time a subject like this comes up. People seem to have a quasi-magical conception of pathogens roughly equivalent to believing that stars are holes poked in the roof of the sky, through which the Divine Light shines through. [/rant]
      • So influenza viruses cause influenza. Smallpox viruses cause smallpox. Common cold viruses cause the common cold. But HIV viruses cause AIDS. It's weird how everyone becomes so picky when it comes to AIDS and HIV but not for other diseases. I wonder why.

        • Re:some goofs (Score:2, Informative)

          by optikSmoke ( 264261 )
          Actually, from my understanding (though IANAMD) the parent to your post isn't quite correct in calling AIDS a disease. It's actually a syndrome (Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), thus it is different than the "influenza virus causes influenza". AIDS is the state of having such a poor immune system, caused by the contraction of HIV, that other diseases (like influenza) cannot be fought off. You don't have AIDS until HIV has been in you long enough to batter down your immune system. Thus, having HIV does not infer that you have AIDS, in contrast to having the influenza virus which "immediately" gives you influenza. Or at least, such is my understanding.

        • Re:some goofs (Score:5, Informative)

          by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Wednesday August 28, 2002 @09:46PM (#4160962) Homepage Journal
          AIDS is a syndrome, a set of distinct symptoms that occurs to people. It is the Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, previously known as GRID syndrome, or Gay Related Immune Deficiency syndrome. It was renamed when it became known that sexual orientation was not an aspect of the syndrome.

          Several years after AIDS was identified as a syndrome sweeping across the population, a retrovirus was found, followed shortly by two others. These are HIV 1, HIV 2 and HIV 3. I can't recall which is common - one tends to be found in Africa, and the other in America. They are, all three of them, very closely related, and differ only slightly in symptoms.

          HIV produces a mild flu-like disease. Most people don't even remember it after it happens, and they seldom have to miss work. Their body starts an immune response to the retrovirus, and the infection is beaten back. Like all viruses, however, including those causing Chicken Pox or coldsores, once you are infected, the virus stays with you. The immune response continues, and six months later is easily detectable by doctors - which is why you should always be tested several months *after* you have been exposed to HIV. There is a much more expensive and less reliable DNA test for earlier diagnosis.

          The virus sits inside you and can spread to others. Eventually it enters a secondary phase where it starts reproducing inside the cells that compose your immune system response. These cells are destroyed by HIV's life cycle, more HIV enters the bloodstream, and your T count goes down. Eventually, you do not have enough T cells to fight off other dieases, as they have all been ripped apart by HIV using them as virus factories, and you die. Most modern defintions of AIDS include HIV infection and a lowered T cell count. You generally do not get AIDS until several years after you have been infected by HIV, thus allowing you to spread it around.

          So influenza viruses cause influenza. Smallpox viruses cause smallpox. Common cold viruses cause the common cold. But HIV viruses cause AIDS.

          No. There is no such thing as an "influenza virus that causes influenza". Influenza A is currently in common in A(H1N1) and A(H3N2) variants. Influenza B is also common. They cause a variety of ailments including Croup, Bronchitis, and the classic Flu. It depends on where and how it hits your body. (Strep A on your skin is an itchy red spot you might not notice. In your lungs, it will kill you. Same goes for Anthrax).

          Smallpox viruses cause smallpox.

          I don't know much about smallpox. They don't teach it anymore. :) From what I understand, that's a good thing. (Sidenote: the Rotary Club is working on Polio Plus, to wipe out a range of dieases around the world in the same way that smallpox has almost totally been eradicated).

          Common cold viruses cause the common cold.

          Colds are caused by entire classes of viruses - Rhinoviruses and Coronaviruses mostly. There is no medical term "Cold virus", afaik.

          It's weird how everyone becomes so picky when it comes to AIDS and HIV but not for other diseases. I wonder why.

          People who are HIV positive are perfectly healthy people. They will die eventually, yes, just like you and I. They can spread the virus, but not through common contact. They can lead normal lives for years.

          People with AIDS are undergoing a progressive breakdown of their immune system. Somebody coughing on them can kill them. They are often suffering from a variety of infections and cancers, and gather more as time goes by.

          There is a substantial difference.

          --
          Evan (don't they teach this in high school?)

          • AIDS is a syndrome because the word 'disease' has negative connotations and so it's more politically correct to say 'syndrome'. Of course it's a disease.
            • It's been too long since my classes. Hopefully somebody can pop up with the medical difference between a syndrome and a disease. Paraphrasing from long forgotten early medical classes, a syndrome is a collection of symptoms and conditions observed in patients. It could be caused by things like high voltage power lines or exposure to certain metals. Or it could be a virus, a tumor in a particular part of the body... anything. In the early days, back when it was GRID, they thought that semen being chronicaly present in the colon might produce AIDS, no virus, just the semen causing an immune breakdown. They had no idea there was a virus. A disease has a different medical definition, but at this point in typing, I've forgotten it... something about having a cause, maybe? As I say, it's been many years since I read the official definitions, and I don't wish to misinform. Medical literature makes a sharp distinction, and it has nothing to do with being "politically correct", any more than peer to peer models and client/server models are the exactly the same thing, and P2P is just a "politically correct" way to say it. They are similar, but not to the people in the field.

              --
              Evan (no reference)

          • The virus that causes small pox was named after the disease already had a name, small pox. Actually, Small Pox did a good number on American Indians and other native inhabitants as western europeans explored "the new world" and spread the good news. With small pox, you get these wart-like (nevus-like) bumps all over your body, and a real good fever. I think it is the fever that does the most damage. IIRC, it was Pasteur that discovered that milk maids didn't get small pox (it was big in Europe at the time), because they usually got the much milder cow pox (aka "milk maid's fever"), and the resultant immune response from that viral infection also worked good enough against the small pox virus. He then isolated the cow pox virus and started immunizing people with that. HIV causes AIDS. There are other immunodeficiency diseases, but they have their own sets of symptoms and resultant opportunistic diseases. There does not seem to be another disease that causes the set of symptoms collectively called "AIDS". A "syndrome" is typically called a "syndrome" because it is either a collection of symtoms that collectively indicate a problem that is statistically significant, and has no identifiable problem. Just like fibromyalgia is a problem, and there seems to be a good set of diagnostic criteria to distinguish this (finally), there are enough people who see it as a problem for chronic whiners, etc. When the situation was discovered in the US and Europe, there was a group of people that were coming up with weird things like Karposi sarcoma, massive lung fungal infections, etc., that most people normally just don't get unless something else is wrong, but that something else couldn't be identified. In the US, many of these people could be lumped together also by lifestyle or activity (thus, GRID). Then the HIV virus was identified. Then a few "normal" people got it, from blood transfusions, "straight" sex, etc. Only then did it become really a national issue, because now it wasn't just a disease of a couple select marginal groups of people. GRID was no longer applicable, so AIDS started to work. You acquire HIV. You don't casually get it, like you do the flu every year. Also, not every virus stays with you forever. Think about the flu virus. If an HIV-pos person started going down hill, don't you think they would be at a higher risk for all those latent flu virii in their body to make them sick again?
            • A syndrome is seen as a collection of symptoms that occur together, but there isn't an identifiable cause. Think (or read up on): Fibromyalgia.

              A disease usually has one or a few symptoms that can clearly be traced to one causitive entity. The disease that HIV causes could be called immune system destruction. Since the person doesn't die directly from this, but usually from the other opportunistic diseases that typically arise from advanced HIV infection, as well as the image stamp ("first meme") problem, then AIDS is probably what the terminal symptomology will still be called.

              Syndromes often become diseases, but not the other way around.

              • Yeah - you two pretty much said what I said - a syndrome is a set of symptoms and (IIRC) related factors (race, sex, occupation, prior diease, etc) without an absolutely known cause. I just didn't want to say my definition was correct and be slammed by an enthusiastic premed student with the textbook in front of him.

                There is a common set of things that define a syndrome - I've seen the bulleted list of around five or six points (varies from class to class and which texts are being used), and been tested on them. Like any other convention, there's a bit of wiggle room, but there is a semi-standard set of points for what makes up a "syndrome".

                (BTW - not to you, but to the other person who replied... I'd suggest the use of some paragraphs in your posts. My eyes glazed over a quarter of the way though that).

                --
                Evan (no reference)

          • >

            people with HIV arnt allways going to die,
            there are a number of ppl whos can carry the
            virus and not end up with AIDS..

            A lot of reserch has gone into this area

            Recent Slashdot link [slashdot.org]
            • I'm fairly certain that all people with HIV are going to die. I'm also fairly certain that all people without HIV are going to die. (Reread what I wrote again :) It was carefully phrased for that reason).

              It's just that most people with HIV will wind up developing AIDS at some point.

              --
              Evan

        • It's weird how everyone becomes so picky when it comes to AIDS and HIV but not for other diseases. I wonder why.

          Interestingly, you wouldn't encounter that much general nit picking on biology/medicine websites. Maybe people visiting those sites concentrate more on facts that have any relevance. Where as on Slashdot someone can indeed get modded up while showing off their "impressive" (ehem...) bio skills by correcting minor details in posts of others.
        • So influenza viruses cause influenza. Smallpox viruses cause smallpox. Common cold viruses cause the common cold. But HIV viruses cause AIDS. It's weird how everyone becomes so picky when it comes to AIDS and HIV but not for other diseases. I wonder why.
          AIDS is not limited to humans. Cats, for example, can get it too, but not from the HIV but the FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus).
      • more accurately the stars are not holes poked in the roof of the sky but are regions that are merely absent of darkness...

    • What do you think makes an 'AIDS virus' different from the other kind? M$ clearinghouse issued a CRL entry for it ;-)
      Actually I think the Sandia editor used this term to make it easier for people that don't understand it's ethiology (did I spell it correctly?) Boh, hope this molecule doesn't kill the target cells too. I mean come on, there are people out there that beleive in creationism...

      Ciao
    • What I remember reading (actually I think on ./, but I can't find the original so just note that I'm not the first person to mention this) is that one of the biggest problems with AIDS is that the virus itself will become dormant in some cells over time. As the virus is not active, but simply lie in wait in cells until their time to rise, "cures" tend to overlook the cells while destroying active viruses.

      From what I see, this solution would make it so the virus might not be able to kill you, but it would not make it so that you weren't infectious to others.
  • Since there are no "real" cures for viruses, mearly anitviruses that train the bodies immune system to fight off viral infection, with time, could these HPAs be used as a sort of basic antivirus, waiting in the blood stream to attach to viruses?

    I know nothing about these HPAs other than what I've read in the the linked articles, but thoughts of HPA based morning vitamins to help prevent things as mundain as flu to as vicious as ebola sure sounds like something to strive for.

    I can see the slogans now. "A Pill a day, Keeps the Viri at bay!"

    *shudder*
    • Well, could be, but there are questions and concerns to be raised.

      IANAMD, but my mother is an infectious disease doctor (working, in fact, in a trial testing a prototype HIV vaccine). I have yet to ask her about this (seeing as I am at work), but one of the common concerns she has when she hears about antibiotics being used frequently is that strains of resistant bacteria may result faster due to overprescription of drugs.

      There seems to be very little on the web about HPAs, but from what I've gathered, there seems to be conflicting, hazy theories about how they work on viruses. Now, HPAs very well may be resistance-proof: if a virus cannot replicate due to the physical constraints on retroviral replication, then they have little chance. However, evolution is a weird thing (to put it lightly). The most far-fetched mutation of a virus might just end up working, resulting in its proliferation.

      Then there are the safety issues. Even though does not decompose in neutral solutions (and therefore compatable with the pH of blood), there are still the standard concerns about toxicity, carcinogenicity (is that a word?), and the like. One site [emory.edu] I found seems to have a description of a HPA that worked....until it started causing cancer in the patients.

      Of course, this all might work, too. I hate to sound like a nay-sayer, though, but it's got a ways to go.
    • Antiviral medications do exist. None of them are as effective against viruses ([ob] no such word as "viri" [/ob]) as the best antibiotics are against bacteria, but they're out there and getting better. I think that what you're thinking of is vaccines, which do "train" the body to detect and resist infection (viral, bacterial, or other) and can be very effective -- depending on the target. Smallpox and polio, fortunately, turn out to be fairly easy to make vaccines for. HIV, unfortunately, doesn't.
    • There are plenty of cures for viruses, or else you'd be dead after catching your first cold:

      • Antibodies (not antiviruses), they bond to viruses to render them inactive.
      • Interferons, a class of chemicals that inhibit viral reproduction.

      These are two of the tools that your immune system works with to clean yourself of a virus, with another helper being cytotoxic cells which go around and eat infected cells to clean up and stop the spread of the virus. To me it seemed that the HPA's as they discussed them in the article were of a more general purpose nature, and would bond to many different kinds of viruses.

      This is both a good and a bad thing; with the bad thing being that because they are so chemically active they could cause any range of problems when they enter the diverse chemical pool of the bloodstream. Who knows what could happen?

  • This is better than cold fusion! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 0x69 ( 580798 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2002 @03:35PM (#4158817) Journal
    As science, this sounds very cool. HOWEVER, this is a report of some ultra-preliminary initial discovery. The chance of it living up to the first-press-release hype is essentially zero.

    There are jillions of chemicals that will disable/destroy/etc. HIV in a test tube. Like plain old chlorine bleach. You know any AIDS sufferers being successfully treated with bleach?

    I didn't think so.
    • Reminds me of a cancer bio class I took. One speaker started off with the proclomation that cancer could easily be stopped. After a pause to let that statement sink in, he added "with a liberal application of gasoline". He then went on to lecture on drug side effects.
  • Something that might revolutionize the treatment of AIDS, and make it completely managable was discovered by accident. So was Teflon, and Rogaine. So was the planet Uranus. Herschel initially thought he was seeing an asteroid. It is amazing how we can't find things we are looking for, but do find things we weren't looking for.
    • Incidentally, it's a little-known fact that the first spotting of Uranus was performed with astonishingly minimal equipment -- just a flashlight and both hands. >rimshot
    • Herschel didn't think he was seeing an asteroid. A comet maybe, but not an asteroid. Uranus was discovered on March 13, 1781, 20 years before the first asteroid (Ceres) was first spotted by Giuseppe Piazzi (January 1, 1801). The term asteroid was coined by Herschel, but not until after the second asteroid (Pallas) was discovered by Heinrich Olbers on March 28, 1802.

      Uranus is in some way tied to asteroids though. The discovery of Uranus "proved" the Titius-Bode law, a mathematical formula that gave the distance of the planets from the sun. Based on the location of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter, Bode's law predicted the location of Uranus. When Uranus was discovered in nearly the exact location it was supposed to be, astronomers started taking the law seriously. The interesting thing about Bode's law is that it also predicted a planet in the gap between Mars and Jupiter. Kepler also suspected that there was a planet between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers planned a cooperative search for the missing planet in the gap. Before they could get started, Piazzi found Ceres. Pallas, Juno (1804), and Vesta (1807) were discovered shortly thereafter. After Pallas, they realized they weren't looking at planets, but instead minor planets.

      So that's the story of asteroids and Uranus.

  • A brilliant example of the value of pure research (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Myco ( 473173 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2002 @06:44PM (#4160134) Homepage
    This is the kind of thing that happens when scientists are allowed and encouraged to explore above and beyond simple applications. The substance discovered was the result of an impurity, and caused some clogging problems in the filter it was forming in. Read what the article says about the discovery:

    "Identifying the problem concluded her task, but scientific curiosity led her to attempt to create the compound as an independent entity. "I was curious to see if I could synthesis it pure, rather than leave it merely as a discovered impurity," says Nyman."

    Intellectual curiosity was the key here, more than dumb luck.

    • Now, if we can just keep getting people/governments/companies to PAY for pure research based on intellectual curiosity, instead of wanting instant gratification ....
    • Not to detract from the important point Myco makes about encouraging pure research, unfortunately this is also an example of how scientists (encouraged by media exposure) tend to hype their discoveries very prematurely. The binding of radioactivity is pretty cool because that can be done in vitro. For viral inactivation one must realize that most viruses bind to protein molecules (usually receptors) on the surface of living cells and use them as a mechanism of entry into those cells. These receptors have a "normal" and often important function in the body that has nothing to do with viral entry. It is easy to imaging scenarios where the same compound that inactivates the virus will also inactivate the normal in vivo functions of the body, or the molecule is just generally toxic when administered. It is very irresponsible to give false hope to a group such as those who are HIV positive, desperately in need of new treatments. To secure continued grant support scientists often feel the need to over-hype discoveries. Stronger support for pure research without an obvious direct application might help alleviate some of that pressure on scientists and we might see more responsible press releases.

  • Sounds promising (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What sort of affinity does this stuff have with cell walls, DNA, and so on? If it clung to viruses and was completely inert to the body, it would be a revolution in medicine. No more viruses.

    But we never get a free ride. The stuff will clog the arteries or something. Otherwise it will be sufficiently inert that it is used liberally, everywhere, and then it will turn out that viruses played a subtle role in all living systems. Of course that discovery would occur once the virus balance has been terminally offset.

  • reaching for straws (Score:3, Informative)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Friday August 30, 2002 @12:48AM (#4168340)
    There are plenty of compounds that "bind to HIV and keep it from entering cells". Most of them also bind to lots of other things or are poisonous. A few, carefully designed ones (fusion inhibitors) are in clinical trials and may help with drug treatment regimes.

    However, since HIV is a retrovirus, it can stay dormant as DNA inside cells and re-appear spontaneously after years or decades even if it is killed off completely. Therefore, it is impossible for drugs to cure HIV; they can only control it and only if taken indefinitely. Only a "curative" vaccine could control HIV infection without drugs, but even in the best possible scenario, people would still remain asymptomatic carriers and they would probably still require regular boosters.

    The long and short of it is: don't get infected with HIV. It's a nasty virus, it is intrinsically incurable (although it may be controllable eventually), and it is easy to avoid.

  • Oooops (Score:3, Funny)

    by ThereIsNoSporkNeo ( 587688 ) on Friday August 30, 2002 @03:11PM (#4172659)
    Ooops. I cured AIDS. Huh.

    *In the background you hear 20,000 disgusted AIDS researchers throwing their clipboards to the ground in disgust*

    Dumb luck. Gotta love it.

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