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Scientists have announced a breakthrough in efforts to develop an effective treatment for the dreaded AIDS pandemic. Researchers said they have found where the elusive virus hides in the body to prevent attacks by anti-retro viral drugs. Researches said because the virus can elude the full effects of the drugs, anti-retro viral have only managed to keep HIV at very low levels in the body, but are unable to get rid of the virus completely.
Scientists said they have been searching for places where the virus could hide and they believe they have found them. The discovery could eventually lead to better treatments and perhaps a cure.
Professor Rafick-Pierre Sekaly, scientific director at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute in Port St. Lucie, Florida said finding HIV's hiding places is the first step to a cure. "We had some clues, but nobody had been able to identify precisely the cells in which it was hiding.
Everybody went with the assumption that by using more and more potent drugs that target the virus that we were going to be able to get rid of it. And in fact what we found is that that will never work," he said. Prof. Pierre Sekaly said a different approach is needed to eliminate the virus. "You have to target not the virus, but the cells in which the virus is hiding. And that I think it is a very different concept than what everybody has been pushing for.
That clearly is a major finding that we have got to the table. HIV is hiding in a cell, that can remain in your body for the rest of your life. It's a very important cell in the immune system.
This is the kind of cells that are called memory T-cells. They are the cells that carry the memory of seeing an infectious disease," he said. Experts said when a person is vaccinated against a particular disease, these memory T-cells remember how to respond if that pathogen is somehow introduced into the body. They then launch a very specific attack. But, they are also the perfect hiding place for HIV.It's important to understand that the virus evolves. It kills the cells that can mount the immune response and it hides in those cells that remain in the body for the rest of your life. And so it adapts like a chameleon," he said.
Prof. Pierre Sekaly said now that HIV's hiding places have been discovered, a cure may be in the horizon.
"I think what we need to do now, and that really is going to be our major challenge, is really to find drugs that can kill the cells in which the virus is hiding without affecting the memory T-cells that are good for the body," he said. He says he's "quite optimistic" researchers will be able to develop such drugs "because we've already gone a long way in targeting specifically those cells." He said there's a "long way ahead," however, to find such medications, "but at least now we have a target," he said.