Scientists have finally
found a way to outsmart the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), or rather, its
ability to hide from the antibodies and immune cells. This is the quality that
makes HIV so dangerous. However, researchers were able to find a way to create
an effective cure for AIDS using the substance tacrolimus and finally win over
the dangerous disease.
The main difficulty against
the human immunodeficiency virus (responsible for such a scary disease as
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is that this malicious virus is completely
elusive for human immune system. One gets the impression that it has some kind
of invisibility power where antibodies cannot recognize it. A fairly strong
variability of the HIV protein is to blame. This is precisely why the immune
system is unable to develop antibodies that could "identify and
detain" the virus exiting the cell.
However, in principle, there
is another way of neutralizing HIV. The immune system can do it when the virus
is still in the cell. All cells of the body have a semblance of integrated
alarm activated when a pathogen enters a cell and start
reproducing. Each infectious
agent, be it a virus or a bacterium, penetrates the cell to bring along its own
set of molecules that interact with cellular substances and activate the alarm.
This signal represented by a chemical reaction rapidly comes to the immune
system, attracting antibodies to the infected cell.
This is the usual way of
neutralization of many viruses and bacteria that manage to get into cells, but
it does not work with HIV. When penetrating a cell, this virus begins to breed,
and manages to remain invisible to the alarm system. It was completely unclear
how the virus manages to do it. However, the observations showed that the
infected cell behaves as a healthy one, and therefore antibodies are not
interested in it. How does the HIV achieve this effect? Recently, biologist
Greg Towers and his colleagues at University College of London (UK) were able
to figure it out. After a series of experiments, the researchers found that
HIV, once in a cell, binds to three proteins, one of which is required for the
maturation of mRNA, and the other two belong to the immune protein cyclophilin.
More at Pravda
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