HIV pioneers unite to stamp out the virus for good

Could this be the endgame for HIV? Pioneers of HIV research last week announced a united goal: to stamp out the virus forever.

"Finding a cure is going to be one of multiple strategies to end the epidemic," says Sharon Lewin of the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, who is one of the 34 founders of the global scientific strategy called "Towards an HIV Cure". The announcement came ahead of the 21st International AIDS Conference in Washington DC this week.

HIV can be suppressed using antiretroviral drugs but not cured, because the drugs only kill cells in which the virus is multiplying. HIV can lay low by inserting dormant copies of itself into the DNA of healthy cells. Lewin and others are researching new approaches to flush out HIV. She is managing a trial exploring a promising avenue ? giving people a cancer drug called vorinostat that "wakes up the virus" so it can be destroyed with antiretroviral drugs.

Other avenues include loading immune cells with genes to sabotage a white-blood-cell's surface protein, CCR5, which HIV uses to enter cells. A treatment aimed at biochemically chipping the virus out of infected people's DNA is also in development.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Have your say

Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.

Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article

Subscribe now to comment.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/21b1ffeb/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cdn2210A20Ehiv0Epioneers0Eunite0Eto0Estamp0Eout0Ethe0Evirus0Efor0Egood0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

shroud of turin the borgias the masters warren sapp i robot the big c the visitor