#hiv

Gene Therapy Protects Against HIV

News of Note: Gene therapy can protect against HIV

“The road to a vaccine against HIV has proved to be far longer than originally anticipated. More than 2 million adults are newly infected with HIV every year and, nearly three decades after the virus was first identified, researchers haven’t found a reliable way to prevent infection. The classic vaccine approach, which uses all or part of an inactivated virus to induce immunity, has yielded little success because HIV has managed to disguise most of the easily-recognised external structures that antibodies would target. Researchers have thus had a tough time finding a molecule that can induce even moderately broad responses against the virus in all its different mutations. So although it might sound extreme to use gene therapy as a preventative treatment for HIV/AIDS, the method could provide a much-needed alternative.”

“David Baltimore, a virologist and HIV researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and his colleagues used a genetically altered adenovirus to infect muscle cells and deliver DNA that codes for antibodies isolated from the blood of people infected with HIV. The DNA is incorporated into the muscle cells’ genome and programs the cells to manufacture the antibody, which is then secreted into the bloodstream…

“Baltimore and his colleagues tested five different broadly neutralizing antibodies, one at a time, in mice with humanized immune systems. Two of the antibodies, called b12 and VRC01, proved completely protective — even when the mice received doses of HIV that were 100 times higher than a natural infection. After 52 weeks, the levels of antibody expression remained high, suggesting that a single dose would result in long-lasting protection. “We showed that you can express protective levels of antibodies in a mammal and have that expression last for a long period of time,” Baltimore says. “It sets the stage for human trials.”

I’m almost convinced that there will be a cure for HIV within my lifetime; considering the frequency of studies like this one, it sounds more than likely. In a world without HIV, not only will 33+ million people no longer have to suffer needlessly, the movement for sexual freedom will have conquered one of it’s greatest enemies. Disease and suffering being attributed to sex will become a thing of the past.

HPV Alert! Stop! Breathe.

Recently people have been alerted to new facts about the Human Papilloma Virus, known as HPV, a sexually transmitted virus known to cause cervical cancer in women and other cancers, predominately in women but also in men. HPV really represents a cluster of over 100 viruses, most of which are not cancer causing. But now we know HPV can cause heart disease in women, also, and that both men and women are facing HPV strains that cause oral cancer (mouth, throat, tongue, tonsils). More information can be accessed at websites such as the Center for Disease Control, the National Cancer Institute, and the UK-based Mouth Cancer Foundation.

Increasingly, pre-sexual girls are accessing one of the proven preventative inoculations, such as Gardasil, parents protecting their children much like they would from from measles and mumps. There is now a new urgency for all pre-sexual adolescents, not just girls anymore but all boys as well, to get the anti-cancer vaccine.

Much like the onset of the AIDS epidemic, HPV seemed to arrive on our doorstep, incognito and caused by behaviors people enjoy, even crave.

The  era of AIDS started with people losing their lives thinking they were bewitched, the etiology hidden, and its spread seemingly chaotic. Eventually researchers drilled down adequately to identify the risks involved in certain behaviors: engaging in unprotected sex with an infected partner, sharing intravenous needles with an infected partner, or receiving a transfusion of infected blood. Researchers are desperately seeking a vaccine and recently have made encouraging progress toward that goal.

HPV infects the epithelial cells of skin and mucosa, such as the vagina, penis, and anus, and now its transmission orally has been proven indisputably. We are at the stage now where researchers are identifying risky behaviors, and a public health campaign has begun to ensure every pre-sexual boy and girl has access to preventive vaccination. Everyone who engages in oral sex, gay and straight, must consider oral sex a potential danger zone, and we have to learn to protect ourselves and others, again.

All I am saying is this cancer causing virus shouldn’t take us by surprise like HIV did. Let us be vigilant, and do our part to make sure pre-sexual girls/women and boys/men receive their life-saving HPV inoculations. Let’s talk about it wherever we are. Thank heaven, we now have advanced research and technology. We will survive.

 

 


Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists

There is this website, Fold.it. People go there to play a video game about Protein Folding. Players can contribute to science by solving these puzzles.

Wikipedia sums up the news nicely:
“. . . online gamers used Foldit to decipher the crystal structure of M-PMV retroviral protease, which is linked to an AIDS-like virus. Players produced an accurate 3D model of the enzyme in just three weeks. The problem had thwarted scientists for a decade.”  

This is significant: We haven’t hit the singularity yet, but the emergence of tools like Foldit that enable the masses to cooperate, will greatly accelerate technological progress.

  • Captchas are often part of a transcription project, and you’re actually helping transcribe words from old texts.

The beautiful cooperation that we have enabled with the Internet is throwing us forward. As more people participate, and new forms of participation are created, the benefits to and advancement of humankind will be exponential.