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Biotech Science

HIV Immunity Gene Found In Rhesus Monkeys 81

Posted by timothy from the hogging-it-all-to-themselves dept.
Stile 65 writes "According to the BBC, the National Institute for Medical Research has isolated a gene in rhesus monkeys that makes them immune to HIV. Amazingly, 'only a single change to the human [version of the] gene is needed to enable it to block HIV infection.' It's a very different approach to treating HIV infection from the potential vaccine developed in Brazil and described earlier on Slashdot."
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HIV Immunity Gene Found In Rhesus Monkeys More

HIV Immunity Gene Found In Rhesus Monkeys

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  • And please let it work on humans. Also, it'd be nice if it didn't have unforeseen longterm effects.
    • And please let it work on humans. Also, it'd be nice if it didn't have unforeseen longterm effects.

      Recipients of the vaccine may develop the following side effects:
      * An intense desire for bananas.
      * Repeated urges to hurl their own feces at fellow primates (even when its NOT an election year).
    • and soon we will all have the genetics that make us immune to all diseases known to man. Then, when a disease unknown to man arrives it can get us all at once, for genetic variation would be engineered out of us. BAD IDEA. Get us a vaccination, not gene modification.
      • well.. what if you can't have a vaccination.

        and this is the answer. and you need it.

        would you use it or not?

        though that's all MOOT: how about a little RTFA? ""In theory, it should be possible to take cells from an HIV-infected individual, make them resistant to HIV infection with the modified gene and reintroduce them into the patient. These cells could then block progression to Aids."

        insightful my ass

  • Gene therapy at last? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @10:59PM (#11330438) Homepage Journal
    Ever since I read about the potential of gene therapy I've held my breath for a successful application. All experimental treatments that involve gene therapy on humans have failed. A major blow came in January 2003, when the FDA placed a temporary halt on all gene therapy trials using retroviral vectors in blood stem cells. Kids getting leukemia from an experimental treatment, that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for gene therapy (even if they were french). Can these difficulties be overcome? Could this finally be the calling for gene therapy in adults? Or will gene therapy just become a replacement for genetic screening at the embrotic level (ala Frank Herbert's, The Eyes of Heisenberg).
    • All experimental treatments that involve gene therapy on humans have failed

      Sadly true for any useful treatment of disease so far.

      Really the current news is about a scientific discovery, not about gene-therapy at all. But so many people seem to need to say the words 'gene therapy', just to make the thing look newsworthy.

      It seems to be a discovery about comparative or evolutionary biology of the immune system. How these gene differences arose and how they were perpetuated are interesting questions in the

  • It may only be a "single change"... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Atrax ( 249401 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:07PM (#11330503) Homepage Journal
    ... but it sounds from the article like the actual practicality of making that change is some way off. I quote:

    it is important to stress that any therapeutic benefits that may arise from this research are unlikely to be felt for many years.

    "This type of gene therapy would involve removing white blood cells from patients, cloning them, and altering their genetic make-up before reintroducing them to the patient on an individual-by-individual basis.

    "Although it is theoretically possible, this approach is unlikely to be practical or cost-effective with currently available technologies."

    It sounds to me like this would be a rather arduous process to go through, and given the scale of the epedemic that means, effectively, no major impact. The only effective solution is likely to be a cheap, easily admistered, relatively safe vaccine.

    What would have an impact would be for religious leaders worldwide to withdraw their objections to birth control and actually promote condom use. Likewise better funding for medical facilities in overstressed third-world location would prevent infection via needle re-use, as would an educated approach to drug addiction, rather than simply pushing the issue underground.

    there, three easy steps to minimise the spread, while the clever guys work on an actual therapy.
    • What would have an impact would be for religious leaders worldwide to withdraw their objections to birth control and actually promote condom use.

      Actually, promoting condom use doesn't work as well as promoting abstinence outside marriage. Uganda uses a pro-abstinence strategy in fighting AIDS, and it is the most successful anti-AIDS campaign in Africa, and perhaps anywhere. Countries that promote condoms have less success in fighting AIDS...

      Promoting condoms does nothing to reduce sex outside of marria
      • The 90% success rate you quote is not for a single use. Often it's for a year of use, and with training in the proper use of prophylactics, success goes up to ~98%/year.

        The US is not Uganda. In the US, people can afford condoms. In Uganda, they can't.

        Further, the cardinal's critics have to explain why three countries where condoms are readily available and their use vigorously promoted - Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa - have the world's highest rates of HIV infection.

        Prostitution and rape. S. Afr
        • When a good solution happens to be "religious", why does it all of a sudden have to be completely disregarded? I still don't get it. Maybe I don't see the deeper issue, but 0% chance of being infected is still better than 2% chance of being infected.
          • Maybe I don't see the deeper issue, but 0% chance of being infected is still better than 2% chance of being infected.

            Hello, Mr. Michael Jackson? Or is it Mr. Howard Hughes? The degree of isolation acceptable to prevent communicatable disease is always a important, sensitive, personal choice.

            And the religious part of it adds fuel to the fire. How many times do you need to be told "you shouldn't have sex because it's a sin" to have the middle finger up before "because"?
          • It doesn't. The counter to a religious argument is not disregard but measured skepticsm. The problem is that, unfortunatly, religion tends to bias people's arguments and their conculsions. They omit crucial facts. They reach conclusions before weighing arguments. They propose models which are not predictive and they don't ask whether or not a particular model is predictive because they already know that they're right.

            I say this as a person who believes strongly in God but also in the need for truth, even i
            • Hmm... I see where you are coming from. I'm just trying to get a handle on why folks on either side of the debate say what they say, because I believe there are defintely deeper issues than all the prepackaged rhetoric. As for a cure, I'm all for it. Gene therapy is awesome and exciting. But in the mean time, I believe this: don't play with fire, 'cuz sooner or later, you'll be burned. Kinda mean sounding, but you get my drift.
      • Further, the cardinal's critics have to explain why three countries where condoms are readily available and their use vigorously promoted - Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa - have the world's highest rates of HIV infection.

        Because many of them believe that condoms cause AIDS?

  • Fetus Gene therapy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AndreySeven ( 840823 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:12PM (#11330554)
    I wonder if it is possible to introduce this treatment to an unborn fetus still in the womb, effectively immunizing him.

    It seems like an awful amount of work to do on a full grown human...

    • Gene therapy in utero might be rather risky; I suspect doing it in vitro might actually be more effective. Catch those cells before they start dividing, you know?

      The only possible problem I can see is when women give birth to those adorable little rhesus monkeys... could lead to negative press. ;)

    • And then you'd have Rhesus Fetus!

      Oh yeah!

  • Cure for AIDS consequences (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:32PM (#11330746) Homepage Journal
    Not to suggest that we shouldn't cure AIDS, but eliminating HIV as a threat might have some unintended consequences. Would infection rates for other STDs jump as people stopped worrying about condoms? I expect that any such cure will need to be accompanied by a major STD education campaign.
    • Not to suggest that we shouldn't cure AIDS, but eliminating HIV as a threat might have some unintended consequences.

      Sure, but the need for increased spending on prevention/treatment of these other STDs would be more than balanced by the reduced impact of countless other diseases that prey on immunocompromised individuals. I do research on TB, and one of the reasons that bug has been resurgent recently (mostly in the Third World) is that it takes particular advantage of people with AIDS. The current trea
    • aids is so slow that other std's have plenty of time to transfer with it too.

      but most areas needing condoms for aids also need them for overpopulation anyhow...
      • off topic, and the post i'm replying to isn't?
        seriously!

        aids is so slow in killing people that eliminating it won't affect other sexually transmitted diseases that much(thos who are moving them around move them around regardless of aids, it's just an added negative'bonus').

  • health food? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:49PM (#11330894)
    who would have thought that all this time, people could have been eating rhesus phesus [hersheys.com] as a cure?

  • hmmm (Score:1, Interesting)

    by thenewcloo ( 789980 )
    i havent read the article, but at first glance i think "aren't monkeys immune to hiv anyways." before flaming, realize that HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus
    • HIV is the variation of SIV that jumped to humans, SIV standing for Simian immunodeficiency virus. I think the two viruses are closely linked enough for it to still affect monkeys.
    • HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus
      For a bit of history - the first vaccine was cowpox administered to stop smallpox. SIV is very similar to HIV, so the same principle may apply.

  • How to get a cure for AIDS: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matt Clare ( 692178 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:22AM (#11331888) Homepage
    The same way we got a treatment for not being able to get an erection: make sure it affects a lot of rich, white, American men. We'll have a cure in no time!

    I joke, but many a true hath been spoke in jest.
    • This is one of the dumbest fucking comments I've read here in a long time. As of 2000, the US spent upwards of $7 billion fighting AIDS, $2 billion of which was just basic research. Some of this is done in collaboration with Third-World nations as well, not just targeted at US citizens. There is an immense effort to eradicate AIDS, and there have been many advances in short-term treatment (at least, for those in developed nations that can afford the drugs), and you're repeating the standard Slashdot whin
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Actually, by removing treatment for HIV from Africa, you stand a better chance of breeding immune humans. (Sure, a lot of people will have to die, but evolution will work it out in the end.)

          Secondly your ignorant "They fuck like rabbits..." statement shows a basic lack of understanding of mammalian biology and human social systems.
          When placed under biological stress, mammalian rates of fecundity have a tendancy to rise (their fertility rates go up) - this is simply because the species has built in mecha
      • To whoever modded the parent: Just because facts are contrary to your personal prejudices does not make them "Flamebait."
      • As of 2000, the US spent upwards of $7 billion fighting AIDS, $2 billion of which was just basic research.

        Food for thought--the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent $10.8 billion on marketing [thenation.com] in 1998. I presume that figure has risen since.

        $2 billion is one B-2 bomber.

        $2 billion is less than two percent of an Iraq invasion. (And heading rapidly towards 1%.)

        $2 billion sounds like a lot of money, but as far as government programs go it's pretty trifling. About four hundred thousand Americans [yale.edu] have AIDS

    • Re:How to get a cure for AIDS: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      make sure it affects a lot of rich, white, American men

      I've often heard people complain about 'evil' drug companies not spending enough on AIDS research, or charging too much for their drugs. I'm sad to say that if I was a drug company, I wouldn't touch AIDS vaccines/cures with a ten foot pole. Why? Because as soon as I spent a few billion in research to develop and test a drug (and many failures along the way), everyone will demand that I give it away for free to anyone who wants it.

      Yeah, maybe I'm a stin

    • Unfortunatly people in Sydney have been taking this too literally. There have been many instances in recent years of people planting used aids-infected needles in places like movie theaters accopanied by notes like "you've just been infected by aids". In my eyes this is purely a form of terrorism.
  • The fine print is that you risk becoming a 5-monkey-assed human when you undergo this therapy.

  • The cure for HIV (Score:3, Funny)

    by PsiPsiStar ( 95676 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @07:29AM (#11333186)
    ...is Rhesus peices.
  • I think theres a problem in that a lot of current thought is based on Burnette and White's view of the Evolution of Infectious diseases (from the 70s) which states that disease epidemics come when a pathogen moves from a population where it is relativly benign to one which is unprotected, becomes endemic in the new population, and evolves towards benign coexistance with their new host over time. The CDC has even fudged their data (the def. of AIDS) to mimic the spike and decline expected of an epidemic tha
    • The problem is that Burnette and White's views are based on airborne diseases which are frequently transmitted one strain at a time and require the host to be fit enough to walk around in order to pass on the disease, thus selecting against very deadly diseases in most circumstances.

      While this may be true in a general sense when trying to apply these models to HIV, i might point out that Influenza and TB are both airborne, and both very large health threats. Also Ebola Reston was airborne. Latency is th

      • Interesting.

        I shouldn't have been so general when saying 'Africa.'

        Ebola stays latent?

        Yes, I agree the longer the time in host to host transmission, the less lethal a virus can afford to be. TB might be lethal eventually, but doesn't use up host resources at a rapid rate. Also, TB has been around for some time, I believe. According to Burnette and White's theories, a few hundred to a few thousand years from now TB might be non lethal. I don't claim that B&W are 100% accurate, though. On the contrary,
        • Ebola stays latent?

          No, not really, but almost all infections (well viral infections anyway) have some sort of incubation period, which is probably what i should have said. Ebola has a 10-14 day incubation period followed by muscle aches, fever, etc, etc, followed by all the classic jazz...

          The thing with Ebola is that we still don't know a lot about transmission in human populations, so it's not really known if it's contageous at the early stages (because people aren't bleeding all over each other then,

          • Nice chatting with you as well. You're now on my 'friends' list. :) ... Not sure I understand what Scotch has to do with influenza, though.

            I think immunocompromised patients add an interesting element to the evolution of infectious disease. If you have a host who is infected by multiple pathogens and likely to die in a few months, long term strategies which slowly use up a host's resources don't make sense. A few immunocompromised (or multiply infected) people in a population should increase the overall vi
          • Nevermind. Got the scotch reference.
  • Why can't reporters critically examine scientific theories the same way that they're expected to investigate other things. The folks who wrote this report didn't even know that AIDS was an acronym, and wrote it Aids.

    Gah

    Get a reporter with a fvcking science degree!

    I expect more of the BBC.

    • The folks who wrote this report didn't even know that AIDS was an acronym, and wrote it Aids.

      The folks who wrote this report are British and their convention is to capitalize only the first letter of acronyms. They think your all-caps AIDS looks like shouting. Open your mind to the customs of others before ranting.
      • They capitalized HIV.
        They always capitalize BBC.
        They didn't capitalize AIDS.

        And just for the record, I'm not living in the US.

        So you're 0/2 in your baseless assumptions.

        But thanks for playing.


        • My, what a smug smart-ass you are.
          As you appear to be not only clueless but arrogantly so, I'd like to point out to you the difference between an acronym and an initialization. An acronym forms a word while an initialization does not. And I never said you lived in the US, so what was that about baseless assumptions, again?

          You can shut up now or continue to highlight your ignorance. Your call.
          • My, what a smug smart-ass you are.
            As you appear to be not only clueless but arrogantly so, I'd like to point out to you the difference between an acronym and an initialization. An acronym forms a word while an initialization does not. And I never said you lived in the US, so what was that about baseless assumptions, again?

            It says you don't even read your own posts. And I don't blame you. Your subject was UK/US.

            You were the one who personally attacked me with this holier than thou attitude. The reporter w

            • Your subject was UK/US.

              Yes, that was the subject line. Congratulations on your reading ability. The subject was the difference between UK English and US English. The subject was not an assumption about your current living arrangements.

              You were the one who personally attacked me with this holier than thou attitude.

              You were the one who launched a baseless attack on a reporter using a "baseless assumption"; namely, that the reporter used an incorrect capitalization of the word AIDS/Aids. The report
  • a working delivery method convenient enough to be
    applied to a large population. Of course only if
    it is safe and has no detrimental effects on the
    patients and their offspring.

    Nice would be a kind of non selfreproducing
    retro-virus which could (only) infect fertilized
    human egg cells and flick (only) that gene-switch.

    All you would need then to apply the gene-therapy
    will be a load of viri and a syringe.

    The human which will then be born will have a
    (artificial) inherent immunity to aids.

    ps. This is only wishfu
  • Maybe we infuse the hiv-fighting gene into or own gene pool by having sexual relations with the monkeys, that ought to prevent HIV.

    Oh, wait...
  • I seem to remember that another type of primate (Baboons I think) was also found immune to HIV, though they weren't sure why. It was either a gene they had that prevented it, or a lack of something else that it needed to propogate.
    • While I seem to remember that about 1% of people of European descent are immune, something that has to do with their ancestors surviving the plague due to a genetic "defect", and the same "defect" is protecting them from HIV.

      It's even mentionned in this article [bbc.co.uk]

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