On December 7th, an article was published in PLoS One that explained that researchers from UCLA AIDS Institute have found a way to use human stem cells to fight HIV-infected cells. The human stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill the infected cells.
The researchers explained that they took the CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocytes, which are the cells that help fight infections in the body, from an infected individual and identified the T-cell receptors. The T-cell receptors are the cells that recognize and kill the HIV-infected cells. The receptors do not generate enough to completely destroy the virus but the researchers have found a way to engineer these cells and produce large quantities of the HIV-specific CD8 cells.
The researchers determined that the HIV-specific T cells have to match the individual in order to properly work and destroy the infected cells. The next step for the team at UCLA AIDS Institute is to test this method on a human body and determine if this new strategy will work.
"These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic diseases, or even different types of tumors," says Scott Kitchen, a lead investigator and assistant professor at UCLA AIDS Institute. This strategy could be an effective weapon in the fight against AIDS and any other viral disease.
Comments
Once again, great work.
Hopefully they will find a cure for it soon.
Excellent job jst keep on working and our nation wil b healed
Well well well, it has been speculated for quite some time that stem cells can be used to cure disease's. Thanks to George W it set us back a bit. So much could be cured by stem cell research, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many many more....Its a big step that HIV is one step closer to being cured. But there is still a ways to go...Keep up the good work!!!
Nice work. Stem cells offer a lot of hope for the public. However, when you start throwing the "cure" word out there you run into problems. The biggest of which is who's going to fund the research to take this further? It sounds like we're talking about a new scientific procedure versus a drug that could be patented, so that does give one some hope. However, keep in mind, if this scientific procedure continues to show progress, pharma might see this as a threat given their very high profit margins on HIV maintenance drugs. And they have the deep pockets and political clout to move mountains.
Finding a cure is not just about the complex science, but rather the simple economics.
HIV is curable. So is cancer and many other diseases. It's just that we don't know what that cure is, yet... Or maybe we know, it's the steam cells, but still we don't know how to do it. It's all a matter of time, money and work. The question is, how long until HIV can be cured? Years? Tens of years?
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