Medical Discovery News
Science permeates everyday life. Yet the understanding of advances in biomedical science is limited at best. Few people make the connection that biomedical science is medicine and that biomedical scientists are working today for the medicine of tomorrow. Our weekly five-hundred-word newspaper column (http://www.illuminascicom.com/) and two-minute radio show provide insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics. Medical Discovery News is dedicated to explaining discoveries in biomedical research and their promise for the future of medicine. Each release is designed to stimulate listeners to think, question and appreciate how science affects their health as well as that of the rest of the world. We also delve into significant biomedical discoveries and portray how science (or the lack of it) has impacted health throughout history.
Medical Discovery News
A Possible Cure for HIV
926 A Possible Future HIV Cure
Welcome to Medical Discovery News. I’m Dr. Norbert Herzog.
And I’m Dr. David Niesel
Even though HIV is no longer the death sentence it was in the seventies and eighties, it’s still incurable. Medications control the disease for the rest of an infected person’s life.
But now a gene editing advance may be able to inactivate the virus hiding within the body’s immune cells.
HIV infection usually results from unprotected sex and the virus spreads throughout the body targeting the immune system. The virus inserts its genome into immune cells and when they divide, pass the virus on to daughter cells who make more of it.
Without treatment, HIV infection progresses so that eventually the immune system no longer works, and the person ends up with AIDS. Today’s medications keep this from happening by stopping the virus from replicating. But they don’t rid the body of the viral reservoirs.
CRISPR-Cas gene editing hopes to change that. CRISPR is a system that was discovered inside bacteria and scientists found it can be used to target specific genes in the human genome to either cut them, edit them or even insert a different version of a gene.
In a recent study, scientists developed a CRISPR-Cas editing system that can be delivered into HIV-infected lab cells to disable dormant HIV viruses. The next step is to test this in live animals.
And to see if it works on all HIV strains and is effective and safe. Then and only then could human clinical trials begin and perhaps finally cure HIV.
We are Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog, at UTMB and Quinnipiac University, where biomedical discoveries shape the future of medicine. For much more and our disclaimer go to medicaldiscoverynews.com or subscribe to our podcast. Sign up for expanded print episodes at www.illuminascicom.com
