Almost 40 million people live with HIV worldwide. While antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus at undetectable levels, it cannot eliminate it for a simple reason: This virus has the unique ability to hide in a type of white blood cells, ready to resurface if treatment is interrupted. This HIV reservoir has long been one of the greatest challenges in the search for a cure.
Now, a team of scientists from the Peter Doherty Institute for infection and immunity, led by Paula Cevaal, found A way to make HIV virus visible, which could lay the foundations to eliminate it completely from the organism.
As explained in an article Posted in Nature CommunicationsCevaal’s team developed a way to send messenger RNA to cells to eradicate the hidden virus by completely wrapping it in a fat bubble called lipid nanoparticles (LNP). Genetic molecules then instruct cells to make the virus visible.
“Previously, it was believed impossible to introduce RNM in the white blood cells containing HIV -says Cevaal -but thanks to a new type of LNP, called LNP X, the team found a way that these cells accept the RNAm. Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design can be a new way towards HIV cure. ”
The human immunodeficiency virus attacks the immune system and can cause AIDS, which is deadly, if not. Despite decades of research, there is still no effective cure for the disease; although Some patients have cured completely from HIV, treatments are still extremely complex and expensive.
While it is a promising step in the right direction, scientists still have to determine whether to make visible the hidden virus will make the body’s immune system fight it. Other possibilities include developing New ways to combine your findings with other gene therapies To, ultimately, cure HIV.
Before the most recent technique can be used in humans, it would also have to undergo exhaustive tests, from animal experiments to humans, a process that could easily take many years. AND Cevaal seems to be realistic about those possibilities.
“In the field of biomedicine, many things finally do not come into clinical practice; that is the sad reality -adds Cevaal -I do not intend to present a more attractive image of reality, but in the field of The HIV cure, we have never seen anything as good as what we are seeingregarding the ability to reveal this virus. From that point of view, we have a lot of hope that we can also observe this type of response in animals and, eventually, we can do it in humans. ”
Beyond HIV, the CEVAAL team expects its MRNM administration method based on LNP to also apply to other diseases, including certain types of cancer.