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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Completed Research
Forum: FightAIDS@Home Phase 2
Thread: Interesting news articles about HIV / AIDS |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 55
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Jim Slade
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 27, 2007 Post Count: 664 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Forms of HIV can cross from chimps to humans study confims
The first in vivo evidence that strains of chimpanzee-carried simian immunodeficiency viruses can infect human cells has been reported by a team of scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160722092947.htm  |
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Papa3
Senior Cruncher Joined: Apr 23, 2006 Post Count: 360 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Follicular cytotoxic T cells can root out hidden HIV infection if given #-boosts
Dr Di Yu, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia, said: 'We've shown for the first time that there are specialised killer T cells that can migrate into a part of the lymphoid tissue and control hidden infection.' ... The researchers discovered that these specialised killer T cells, called follicular cytotoxic T cells, can enter hiding spots inside lymphoid tissue, where viruses can hide on treatment. These hiding spots are called B cell follicles. [The researchers discovered how to boost their numbers and enhance their killing powers so they could destroy the HIV virus. They could also cure other viral infections such as glandular fever virus, they said.] Another of the study's authors, Mr Yew Ann Leong, from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, said although some infections including HIV could hide within B cell follicles, these killer T cells are specialised to eradicate them. 'This discovery will help us to design new therapies that could eventually treat many different infections, including HIV,' Mr Leong said. Dr Axel Kallies, fellow lead researcher on the study, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, said the potential of this discovery is huge. 'It helps us to understand how we may be able to treat diseases that affect the immune system itself, such as HIV or B cell lymphoma, [or Epstein-Barr virus, the cause of glandular fever]' Dr Kallies said. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-372...l-hiding-virus-cells.html |
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Papa3
Senior Cruncher Joined: Apr 23, 2006 Post Count: 360 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Researchers have taken a different approach to studying the conformations of larger proteins. By slowly pulling apart a protein called Protein S, they discovered a previously unknown stable conformation made possible by balancing charges between two domains. The results show some of the field's long-held ideas need to be revised.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809145250.htm |
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Papa3
Senior Cruncher Joined: Apr 23, 2006 Post Count: 360 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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HIV is a retrovirus, meaning it has to copy its RNA genome into DNA in order to infect cells. Previously, it wasn't known how the virus acquires the building blocks of genetic material it needs, called nucleotides. Importantly, it also wasn't known how HIV does this without setting off the cells alarm systems that are poised to detect foreign DNA.
HIV is surrounded by a protein shell called the capsid. It has now been found that HIV hides within the capsid while it builds DNA. The interdisciplinary team used a hybrid approach that involved discerning the atomic structure of the capsid in different states and creating mutant versions of HIV viruses to see how this altered infection. This allowed the researchers to discover iris-like pores in the capsid that open and close like those in the eye. These pores suck in nucleotides needed for replication at great speed while keeping out any unwanted molecules. This helps to explain why HIV is so successful at evading the immune system. After they identified these capsid pores the team then went on to design an inhibitor molecule that could block them -- hexacarboxybenzene. Once the pores were blocked by the molecule, the HIV virus was unable to copy itself and became non-infectious. Hexacarboxybenzene cannot cross the cell membrane of human cells to gain access to the virus, but the researchers suggest that drugs could be designed in the future with similar properties but able to enter the cell. Another option is to look at drugs currently used in treating HIV, called reverse transcriptase inhibitors, to see if there are ways of improving their transit through these pores thereby enhancing their activity. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160810141932.htm |
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Papa3
Senior Cruncher Joined: Apr 23, 2006 Post Count: 360 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Berkeley Scientists Develop Cheap Mass-Production Metal-Organic Frameworks, Greatly Simplifying & Extending X-Ray Crystallography & Providing Chirality Detection; Complex Molecules Are Now Very Easily Crystallized
The metals in the MO framework itself can actually serve to enhance the quality of the X-ray images, Kapustin said, adding that in one case the technique allowed researchers to distinguish between two nearly identical plant hormones based on the difference in a single atomic bond. Researchers could see structural details down to hundredths of a nanometer -- less than the diameter of some atoms. "You can see with such precision whether it is a double bond or a single bond, or if this is a carbon atom or some other atom," Lee said. "Once you bind a molecule in the MOF, you can learn the absolute structure very precisely since the chirality of the MOF serves as a reference during the structure refinement." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160818150236.htm |
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Jim Slade
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 27, 2007 Post Count: 664 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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HIV cure hope thanks to collaboration
Researchers are hopeful of a cure for HIV after treating the first patient with a promising new treatment that could kill all traces of the virus. A partnership sparked by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is behind this collaborative UK effort for the new treatment, which is a first-of-its-kind. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161003141409.htm  |
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Papa3
Senior Cruncher Joined: Apr 23, 2006 Post Count: 360 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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...rational drug design is costly, in terms of time, money, materials, and effort. And too often it yields end products that are too toxic to be used pharmacologically, even if they bind their target well. Now, a bunch of scientists writing in Nature Biotechnology have suggested that, when the drug itself is a protein, there's a better option than trying to design and chemically optimize drug candidates. Instead, we can take a look back through time to see how evolution has already optimized proteins to perform in different contexts. The scientists call their method Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction. It is based on the idea that evolution has optimized proteins to function optimally in species that may have very different physiologies. Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction highlights the notion that evolution is toward fitness in a specific context, rather than toward an absolute idea of “highest” or “best.” As the name implies, the scientists predict ancient protein sequences based on proteins currently present across different species. Using data from gene sequencing, they can reconstruct these potential ancestral proteins.
As a proof of concept they looked at factor VIII (FVIII), a clotting factor that, when deficient, causes hemophilia A. We currently treat this with a recombinant human FVIII, but it has a short half-life, tends to generate an immune response, and is not particularly efficient. Based on the sequence present in other mammals—not just primates, but mice, rats, hamsters, rabbits, chinchillas, water buffalo, killer whales, snow leopard, shrews, hedgehogs, manatees, alpacas, ferrets, mouse-eared bats, etc.—these scientists generated 78 putative earlier, ancestral versions that would have been present in ancient mammals. When put into cell lines, three of these possible ancestral FVIII proteins were expressed at higher levels, were exported more efficiently, and were more potent than the proteins we’ve got. The researchers in Nature Biotechnology speculate as to why human FVIII may have evolved toward reduced coagulation activity, but regardless of the reason, these retrofitted, hyperactive variants could make better drugs. ... http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/analyz...mize-protein-based-drugs/ |
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Jim Slade
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 27, 2007 Post Count: 664 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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AIDS: The making of the 'Patient Zero' myth
A combination of historical and genetic research reveals the error and hype that led to the coining of the term 'Patient Zero' and the blaming of one man for the spread of HIV across North America. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161026132930.htm |
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Jim Slade
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 27, 2007 Post Count: 664 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Researchers Clear 'Patient Zero' From AIDS Origin Story
National Public Radio reports that by genetically sequencing samples from people infected early on, scientists say they have figured out when and where the virus that took hold here first arrived. In the process they have exonerated the man accused of triggering the epidemic in North America. A team of researchers at the University of Arizona sequenced HIV virus taken from Canadian flight attendant Gaetan Dugas, the man called "Patient Zero" in the best selling book And the Band Played On, which chronicled the early days of the AIDS epidemic in America. http://tinyurl.com/zstk5rs |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2129 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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A possible path to lasting remission w/o ART
----------------------------------------https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2016/11/01/mock...r-updating-with-fcs-edit/ In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, and NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases set out to explore whether response to ART might be improved by interfering with CD4 T cells that express the key integrin receptor. The agent they chose to run such interference was an antibody similar to vedolizumab, an integrin receptor-blocking antibody drug recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of two severe intestinal diseases: ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Researchers hypothesized that this antibody might be able to prevent CD4 T cells from homing in on the gastrointestinal tract, thereby helping to control the virus better. To test this theory, the researchers turned to the SIV-infected rhesus macaques. Eighteen macaques received daily ART treatment for about 3 months. A month into the ART regimen, 11 of the animals also began receiving infusions of an antibody similar to vedolizumab every 3 weeks and those treatments lasted about 6 months. The remaining seven animals got infusions of a non-specific antibody as a control. As soon as the ART was stopped, SIV levels rose in the controls. In contrast, eight of the animals that received the vedolizumab-like antibody demonstrated a remarkable and lasting ability to control SIV. In fact, researchers report that levels of virus in their bloodstream have remained at low or undetectable levels for two years and counting. (An important safety note: three of the animals receiving the antibody developed immune reactions to the antibody drug, forcing their withdrawal from the study). As you can see in the image above, the researchers used a novel PET/CT imaging technique to track CD4 T cells within the macaques. That imaging showed that the animals’ immune systems improved after the ART-antibody combo treatment. And it also revealed a big surprise: animals treated with vedolizumab-like antibody had almost normal CD4 T cell levels in their intestines. In other words, the new treatment strategy had worked—but probably not in the way the researchers had anticipated! What’s more, SIV control in the macaques wasn’t explained by the production of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs). That is noteworthy because bnAbs are known to protect a small fraction of HIV-infected people after their immune systems have battled the virus for many years. Researchers working to develop an effective HIV vaccine have struggled for years to find ways to coax the immune system to produce those bnAbs more quickly. The new findings therefore suggest there may be another, as yet unidentified, target for HIV vaccines, as well as treatments.  Caption: PET/CT imaging reveals a surprisingly high concentration (yellow, light green) of key immune cells called CD4 T cells in the colon (left) of an SIV-infected animal that received antibody infusions along with antiviral treatment. Fewer immune cells were found in the small intestine (right), while the liver (lower left) shows a high level of non-specific signal (orange). Credit: Byrareddy et al., Science (2016).   |
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