Becoming Immune to HIV
Posted Jan 20, 2012
Back in June I wrote a blog article about how close we are to a cure for HIV. I had no idea it would be that popular since I was just piggy-backing off a great article I found in New York magazine, but we get a lot of Internet traffic for it. The small article I saw in the January/February 2012 issue of Discover magazine takes it a step further.
2011 was a good year in HIV research. It appears that the stem cell success cure from Timothy Brown case study really gave researchers a refreshing reboot in their quest. I feel that many people like to hate that HIV became a part of our recent world, but on the flip side there are gigantic strides being made in the medical industry as a result.
The effort and money put forth to solve the HIV puzzle could be a similar accomplishment to putting a man on the moon (maybe even Mars). So while it is a scary scourge, what has come out of the past almost 30 years of research I think will change the way we treat all diseases.
Pop open your copy of Discover subscription on page 18 and see that the newest research done with zinc finger nuclease is amazing! Not only can it be used for HIV, but I can see several applications using the same technique for other viruses like ebola, hepatitis B and C, and all sorts of influenza strains. Using the ZFN technology, they are not attacking the virus directly, but actually snipping out a gene in your DNA that produces a protein on the surface of your cells that allows HIV to enter. That’s pretty impressive stuff…just think if we could eventually make your immune system impervious to all kinds of infectious diseases??
We’re getting closer. Let’s hope for a breakthrough soon! You can find part of the article here online.