Scientists unravel biggest mystery of HIV

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.

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