Multiple HIV copies allow the virus to spread throughout the body and beat down the immune system.
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Finding a cure is problematic, as it’s hard to eradicate the virus once it’s integrated into CD4+ T-cells – the primary cells infected by HIV. This latest achievement now appears in Nature Scientific Reports.
The new genome editing technique could potentially lead to a cure of HIV/AIDS and furthermore revolutionise the way genetic diseases are treated.
Geneticist Kamel Khalili and colleagues from Temple University extracted infected T-cells from a patient. The tech is made up of a guide RNA, which is used to locates the HIV-1 virus in the DNA, and a nuclease, which is then able to edit it out of the sequence.
When the team reintroduced HIV-1 DNA to the cells, the cells couldn’t reinfect. The recent introduction of CRISPR/Cas9 has now inspired a new approach.
Achieving a cure has been a bedeviling challenge because there has been no way to eliminate latent viral DNA from an infected cell’s genetic code without destroying that cell. And since the microscopic genetic system stayed within the cell, it prevented further infections even when particles of HIV-1 attempted to return to the unedited cell.
There’s still a lot more work to be done in getting this technique ready for something more advanced than human cells in a petri dish – particularly when it comes to ideal accuracy for the “cutting” process – but it’s an exciting first step. Still, the researchers ruled out off-target effects (that is, unanticipated side-effects of gene-editing) and potential toxicity. The new study, used patient cells grown in the lab, showed cleared cells were no longer susceptible to infection by HIV.
“[The research] shows that the system can protect cells from reinfection and that the technology is safe for the cells, with no toxic effects”, Khalili says.
This technique for snipping out alien DNA could have implications for related research, including treatments for retroviruses that cause cancer and leukaemia, and the suite of retroviruses now affecting companion and farm animals. It involves using naturally occurring enzymes which form part of a bacteria’s immune system to target viral DNA.
And Malcolm has good reason to be excited: his company holds exclusive rights to commercialise this technology.
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In previous work, Dr. Khalili’s team had demonstrated the ability of their technology to snip out HIV-1 DNA from human cell lines.
