Novel HIV treatment approaches.
The current HIV treatment approaches primarily rely on inhibiting viral HIV attachment/replication to and within healthy cells. There are a few novel approaches I’d like to note here.
One such approach from The Immune Response Corporation is to take the HIV virus, radiate it such that it no longer is able to infect healthy cells with its DNA, and then inject it back into a patient’s bloodstream. The proof-of-concept’s data suggest that since this inactivated virus is unable to infect the the healthy CD+4 cells (critical to the immune system,) the body has time to mount an immune response capable of keeping the actual HIV virus at bay.
If proven, of course, this can benefit three-fold:
- Keep HIV-infected individuals’ immune systems healthy.
- Elicit a preventative response to HIV (prophylactic).
- Minimize or even completely eliminate potential side-effects so common with anti-viral medication.
A second novel approach from Enzo Therapeutics actually uses RNA antisense to stop HIV’s ability to replicate (wonderful Nova page on RNAi/gene therapy). According to that data, the antisense was still active 24 months after injection. (This approach does seem riskier than The Immune Response Corporation’s, but it’s still encouraging).
In Koronis’ approach, called “Viral Decay Acceleration,” the idea is to introduce a substrate into the viral genome in an effort to mutate the HIV virus such that it no longer poses a threat (this sounds even scarier–what if a “super virus” is instead created?).
