important hiv news

[mellowtigger]

Two important genetic discoveries announced today.

1) It's happened before with TRIM5 gene

Monkeys have, more than once, evolved a genetic defense to lentiviruses (which includes HIV). "An intriguing possibility is that the newly formed genes prevented infection by prehistoric viruses related to modern AIDS viruses. If so, this could mean that AIDS-

Comments

[that_dang_otter]

A substantial fraction of all animal genomes consist of "dead" retroviruses that entered the germ line but were rendered inactive by natural selection. Retroviruses have been infecting animals for hundreds of millions of years, and have shaped their evolution considerably.

However, in itself, that doesn't really help much to "beat" the epidemic within our lifetimes. All it means is that HIV won't render humans extinct, and that fifty thousand years from now most humans will probably be immune to it.

When it comes to TRIM22, there are quite a few things that can be done with gene therapy in cell cultures, but translating that to living humans is not currently possible in most cases. The gene may lead to a drug candidate that will work, or perhaps (more speculatively) some kind of expression activator that triggers expression of the gene directly in the body. But it's still more likely that any cure will come in the form of a more conventional drug.

Unfortunately, for a virus with so many weak points, it's proven vastly more resilient than any scientist would have guessed 20 years ago. I can't even count the number of critical weaknesses that have been found in this virus, only to find that they are insurmountably difficult to exploit. Someday, though, something's going to nail it.

[furr_a_bruin]

Could the issues you mention be why there isn't a lot of interest (from what I can see) in studying long-term non-progressors? If LTNPs are that way because of a genetic quirk that isn't going to be exploitable in helping other people against HIV, the lack of interest in studying LTNPs becomes more comprehensible.

[that_dang_otter]

Why do you think there isn't interest in non-progressors? I hear news about that subject fairly regularly. If there's anything that limits it, maybe it's that most of the interesting studies have already been done?

[furr_a_bruin]

Because ever since I found out I was one, I've been trying to find a study I might participate in ... and I haven't been able to find anything I could get to - say in LA or the Bay Area. You're right in that doesn't correlate to no interest in the subject, I phrased that badly. But one would think it would be easier to find something like that to participate in.

[mellowtigger]

Two boyfriends ago (13 years ago?), I was dating Carl. I knew he was HIV+ from our second meeting, and he got his AIDS diagnosis our second month together. This was back when not a whole lot was known about seroconversion, and so I tried checking around to see if anyone was needing volunteers to take regular blood samples so they could trace seroconversion in me if it happened. Carl found a place that was doing various HIV studies, so I called them up to talk about it. They were almost hysterically against the idea, adamant that I should be following safer sex guidelines. I was, of course. (I never seroconverted.) It was an intellectually sound proposition for a study, but they wouldn't hear of it. *big shrug*

[that_dang_otter]

Well, patient recruitment is a very tricky thing in studies like this, and I can't say that in any study I've been involved in there would be any role for people walking in off the street. The problem is that people self-select in ways that results in a set that is not representative of the target population. This is OK for certain kinds of qualitative, exploration-driven work, but it greatly undermines the statistical power of quantitative case/control studies.

Also, while I'm at it, by far the most interesting HIV work I've seen lately has been this RNAi screen that identified a whole lot more ways HIV can potentially be attacked. It will be quite a while before it translates into therapy, but the wealth of knowledge generated by this experiment is unprecedented.

[furr_a_bruin]

I see your point - but how the heck do they find people to study?!

Seems like there should be some kind of registry for people willing to participate in a study - and if they match the kind of profile a particular study needs, then they can be contacted.

[that_dang_otter]

Oh, believe me, it's a royal PITA. Ideally, you get them from medical records and track them down in person, or use samples that were collected for some other purpose. Because of complicated privacy and consent issues and the need to satisfy the research boards, the costs are thousands of dollars per patient. (JUST for recruitment.)

At work, we greatly underestimated this problem and found ourselves all dressed up and ready to go - we spent >100M to create the best, most cost-effective genomic screening technology in the world, but ended up without enough human subjects to do the studies we wanted to do with it. And the people who did have patients to work with didn't want to share credit with us by using our services. Nearly killed the company.