While adult entertainment struggles with an HIV crisis, a pair of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory professors say they have a prospective HIV treatment, developed with nothing more than $200,000 and one graduate student.
Using computer-modeling, Adam Arkin (no relation to the ER star) and David Schaffer created a virus that is altered to join with and mute HIV, stifling its ability to turn into AIDS. The virus is even capable of traveling with the HIV strain from person to person and performing the muting function in the new hosts.
Arkin and Schaffer told the recent International Biotech Summit they tested their theoretical virus on both a computer model and in cells in a dish.
And they said it was almost too easy to develop the idea.
"All the capabilities are found in nature, just not in the right order to do what we want to do," Arkin told Wired. "It's like changing the computer language. [Cells] perform amazing engineering feats under the control of complex cellular networks. We didn't design it, evolution did."
"The treatment is made of a gutted HIV virus," said Wired, which noted its similarities to the pathway of gene therapy. "The harmful parts of the virus are removed, and in their place the researchers have inserted a DNA cargo that inhibits HIV's ability to kill immune cells. It latches onto the natural HIV and spreads along with it, even from person to person."
Arkin and Schaffer said they could begin animal testing on the idea by the end of the year.
