Researchers in Los Angeles have managed to stop the AIDS virus HIV from replicating by using gene therapy. Dr John Rossi and his colleagues discovered two proteins that HIV makes once it infects a cell, without these two proteins the virus cannot replicate and therefore cannot infect any more cells. “We can prevent the virus from producing the proteins. It’s like a light with no light switch,” Rossi said. At present the technique has only been studied in the lab, however test on human AIDS patients are set to begin late this year or early next year. Rossi’s method is just of one of a new class of therapies using molecular technology to block disease pathways.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Reported by www.reutershealth.com on the 3rd May 2002
