The extensive treatments for HIV has been radically improved in recent years which help the illness over time but scientists have yet to come up within any real prospects of a definitive cure, up until now after a group of German scientists have said they may have found away to cure the debilitating illness all together.
According to the researchers they believe they have found an specific enzyme that can “cut” the viral DNA out of a cell’s genetic code, which could in turn eradicate the virus from a persons system altogether. The new treatment which was published in Nature Biotechnology earlier this week, has already shown great results when carried out on mice, however the researchers believe that their conclusions show that this DNA-snipping enzyme could be used in clinical practice in the near future. They also say if they can somehow manage to cut HIV’s genetic code out of a patient’s body, the technique could well be a cure for the illness.
TheLiberal.ie won’t quit
Please support us with a small donation on PayPal!
The researchers say they created the DNA-snipping enzyme called Brec1 using directed evolution, an engineering technique that mimics proteins’ natural evolution process. They programmed the enzyme to cut DNA on either side of a sequence characteristic of HIV—a difficult task since the DNA of organisms and of the virus itself mutates often. Still, the researchers identified a well-conserved sequence, then they tested how reliably the enzyme could snip out that sequence in cells taken from HIV-positive patients, in bacteria, and in mice infected with the human form of HIV. After a number of tweaks, Brec1 would cut only that sequence of DNA, patching up the cell’s genetic code once the HIV sequence was cleaved out. After 21 weeks, the cells treated with Brec1 showed no signs of HIV.
Scientists also say they have been extensively researching the possibility of cutting out the parts of DNA that harbor HIV for a long time. They also revealed they have used other gene snipping-enzymes such as CRISPR and TALENS, but those techniques have proven ineffective to use in clinical practice since they can sometimes make accidental cuts elsewhere in the genome.
Although the researchers have said the new breakthrough is a long way off from becoming a new treatment in the immediate future due to the fact that more questions need to be answered such as, what happens in cells that have more than one version of HIV coded in their DNA. The Scientists do say they are fully committed to testing Brec1 in humans in the future.
