Scientists at Erasmus MC have developed a technique with which they can induce dormant HIV-infected cells to commit suicide.
‘Suicide button’ allows HIV-infected dormant cells to clear themselves away
In the West, we may well have HIV under control, but there are still nearly 700,000 HIV-related deaths every year. This is mainly because a lot of people do not have access to HIV medicines or HIV tests. And now, due to corona, that problem is even greater. The Aidsfonds has calculated that this will lead to another 150,000 extra deaths over the next two years on top of the 700,000 per year that are already there.
If someone does have access to the right medicines and you take them the right way, then you are no longer contagious. But because 1 in 3 infected people does not have those medicines, the number of infected people is still increasing. Also because parents pass it on to their children, for example. Something that can therefore be prevented.
Take it a step further
But researchers prefer to go one step further than what is already possible. Because now, even if you have the right care, you will carry HIV with you all your life. You have to take those drugs every day. If someone does not do this, HIV symptoms can develop after a short time and you are also contagious again. The drugs we have now prevent HIV-infected cells from multiplying, but how great would it be if you could clean up those cells completely?
Lately, a lot of work has gone into awakening those dormant cells. You have to be able to find them before you can disable them. Most techniques look at a way to have those cells switched off by the body’s own immune system. But because this immune system is often weakened in people with an HIV infection, these researchers wanted to do it differently. From shock and kill, to shock and induce suicide: so make the cells commit suicide.
They activate a kind of surveillance system for this: a specific mechanism that monitors the environment of the cell. It’s in all cells, but they only activate it in the infected cells, so that they eventually turn against themselves.
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Read more about the research here: Scientists find ‘suicide button’ of cells infected with HIV. You can find the paper in Nature Communictions: Selective cell death in HIV-1-infected cells by DDX3 inhibitors leads to depletion of the inducible reservoir.
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