Posted on 07/16/2008 11:11:38 AM PDT by LibWhacker
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2008) — Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they have uncovered the Achilles heel in the armor of the virus that continues to kill millions.
The weak spot is hidden in the HIV envelope protein gp120. This protein is essential for HIV attachment to host cells, which initiate infection and eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Normally the body’s immune defenses can ward off viruses by making proteins called antibodies that bind the virus. However, HIV is a constantly changing and mutating virus, and the antibodies produced after infection do not control disease progression to AIDS. For the same reason, no HIV preventative vaccine that stimulates production of protective antibodies is available.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Abstinence?
No...can’t do that. Then we couldn’t send $50 billion to Africa.....year after year. We’d have to give our tax money to N. Korea or some thing.
Great, now can we get some more money put on cancer and alzheimers research?
Not sure that it will free up money for other diseases. Unfortunately homosexual men are prone to a number of sexually transmitted diseases. My guess would be that they would lobby to shift funding to some of those other problems rather than ever say that AIDS is now under control.
Since the dollar has been devalued on the world market I think that the USA should provide foreign aid in the form of HD Converter coupons instead of devalued dollars.
AIDS will be under control the same time environmental activism and racial strife are under control.
What about all the innocent victims of HIV/AIDS? All of the boys and girls who are raped by infected people who now have to suffer a death sentence? If we can cure this disease, then by all means we should!
Oh I sure hope they solve this one.
Problem is that the same part of culture shall be the carriers of the next superbug disease.
*****************************EXCERPT************************
The abzymes are derived from HIV negative people with the autoimmune disease lupus and a small number of HIV positive people who do not require treatment and do not get AIDS. Stephanie Planque, lead author and UT Medical School at Houston graduate student, said, “We discovered that disturbed immunological events in lupus patients can generate abzymes to the Achilles heel of HIV. The human genome has accumulated over millions of years of evolution a lot of viral fragments called endogenous retroviral sequences. These endogenous retroviral sequences are overproduced in people with lupus, and an immune response to such a sequence that resembles the Achilles heel can explain the production of abzymes in lupus. A small minority of HIV positive people also start producing the abzymes after decades of the infection. The immune system in some people can cope with HIV after all.”
************ABSTRACT****************
antibodies that perform task of enzymes—that is, they catalyze, or speed up, biological reactions by several million times uncatalyzed rate; previously thought an impossibility, they were first successfully applied in 1986 to mammalian immune system by two independent research teams (one led by Richard A. Lerner of Research Institute of Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif.; …
See #11...
Butt cancer.
Paul’s group has engineered antibodies with enzymatic activity, also known as abzymes, which can attack the Achilles heel of the virus in a precise way. “The abzymes recognize essentially all of the diverse HIV forms found across the world. This solves the problem of HIV changeability. The next step is to confirm our theory in human clinical trials," Paul said.
Unlike regular antibodies, abzymes degrade the virus permanently. A single abzyme molecule inactivates thousands of virus particles. Regular antibodies inactivate only one virus particle, and their anti-viral HIV effect is weaker.
“The work of Dr. Paul’s group is highly innovative. They have identified antibodies that, instead of passively binding to the target molecule, are able to fragment it and destroy its function. Their recent work indicates that naturally occurring catalytic antibodies, particularly those of the IgA subtype, may be useful in the treatment and prevention of HIV infection,” said Steven J. Norris, Ph.D., holder of the Robert Greer Professorship in the Biomedical Sciences and vice chair for research in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the UT Medical School at Houston.
The abzymes are derived from HIV negative people with the autoimmune disease lupus and a small number of HIV positive people who do not require treatment and do not get AIDS. Stephanie Planque, lead author and UT Medical School at Houston graduate student, said, “We discovered that disturbed immunological events in lupus patients can generate abzymes to the Achilles heel of HIV. The human genome has accumulated over millions of years of evolution a lot of viral fragments called endogenous retroviral sequences. These endogenous retroviral sequences are overproduced in people with lupus, and an immune response to such a sequence that resembles the Achilles heel can explain the production of abzymes in lupus. A small minority of HIV positive people also start producing the abzymes after decades of the infection. The immune system in some people can cope with HIV after all.”
Limiting human orifices to their designed function has worked very well at limiting HIV to just certain segments of society.
Sweet, now we can redirect that money going to HIV research into diseases that are by and large caused by behavior.
If breast cancer had the sort of funding that HIV has had, it would have been wiped out long ago.
Sounds like Nobel Prize work.
Pretty damn short. Better hope that the same sequence is not found in healthy body tissues.
thanks, bfl
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