New HIV cure approach forces hidden virus into tripping immune sensor

[QueerDuck]

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-hiv-cure-approach-forces-hidden-virus-tripping-immune-sensor

New HIV cure approach forces hidden virus into tripping immune sensor
Strategy gains momentum after promising results in cell studies and infected people

DENVER—HIV research has led to a bounty of medicines that can control the infection and prevent immune destruction for a lifetime. But a cure for the more than 40 million people living with HIV remains elusive. Treatments have only rid the virus from 11 people, and those successes took a stem cell transplant whose primary purpose was to treat a presumably unrelated blood cancer—an impractical approach for routine use.

Now, studies in the lab and in a few patients, presented last week at an HIV/AIDS conference here, bolster an ingenious new cure approach. The idea is to overcome a trick HIV uses to prevent infected cells from sensing its presence and self-destructing, destroying their cargo of virus in the process. “It’s actually the perfect way to kill an HIV-expressing cell,” says Peter Hunt, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) who was not involved with the work.

Although current drugs can suppress HIV so well that standard blood tests don’t detect it, it persists, lying low in infected T cells and macrophages, the virus’ primary targets, its genetic code woven into our chromosomes. When infected people stop treatment, these latent viruses replicate, and millions of new HIV copies can rapidly flood the bloodstream. Many of the infected cells die as they burst open to release virus or from an immune attack, but some always survive.

The new cure strategy centers on one of the many internal sensors T cells and macrophages use to detect microbes. Known as CARD8, it detects key viral enzymes called proteases, which cut up other freshly minted proteins so new viruses can be assembled. When CARD8 detects a viral protease, it triggers a form of cell suicide called pyroptosis, disrupting the production of new viruses.

GO HERE: https://www.science.org/content/article/new-hiv-cure-approach-forces-hidden-virus-tripping-immune-sensor