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February 25, 2016 06:00 am

Researchers Claim Success In Removing HIV From Living Cells

ffkom writes: A recent publication from German researchers claims success in removing the HI-Virus from living cells, showing a way to completely cure AIDS rather than just suppressing its symptoms (by lowering the amount of viruses) by permanent medication: "Current combination antiretroviral therapies (cART) efficiently suppress HIV-1 reproduction in humans, but the virus persists as integrated proviral reservoirs in small numbers of cells. To generate an antiviral agent capable of eradicating the provirus from infected cells, we employed 145 cycles of substrate-linked directed evolution to evolve a recombinase (Brec1) that site-specifically recognizes a 34-bp sequence present in the long terminal repeats (LTRs) of the majority of the clinically relevant HIV-1 strains and subtypes. Brec1 efficiently, precisely and safely removes the integrated provirus from infected cells and is efficacious on clinical HIV-1 isolates in vitro and in vivo, including in mice humanized with patient-derived cells. Our data suggest that Brec1 has potential for clinical application as a curative HIV-1 therapy."Clinical trials are expected to start in Hamburg, Germany, soon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/cqT-h9QEfRA/researchers-claim-success-in-removing-hiv-from-living-cells

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