![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327200.100-how-to-cure-diseases-before-they-have-even-evolved.html?full=true
There are several research projects going on right now that are about a single anti-viral therapy that prevents several viruses at the same time. The most exciting one, I think, is the one mentioned last in the article.
In healthy cells, certain molecules are found only on the inner surface of the cell membrane. These molecules include a fatty substance called phosphatidylserine, one of the most common constituents of cell membranes. When cells are stressed - when infected by a virus, for instance - some phosphatidylserine ends up on the outer face of the membrane. "It's clearly present on all the virally infected cells we've dealt with," says Thorpe. "It stands out like a beacon." ...
Thorpe and his colleagues have designed an antibody, now known as bavituximab, that binds to exposed phosphatidylserine. Once bavituximab binds to an infected cell, the immune system should quickly destroy it, limiting viral replication.
What this means is that these researches have found something that all viruses have in common, and they have developed a treatment that may take advantage of this commonality to block virus replication *no matter what virus it is*.
In layman's terms, what happens is a virus enters the body, enters a cell, and takes it hostage. It tells the cell to stop doing whatever it's doing and just make copies of the virus. When that happens, a particular molecule gets spit out of the cell and attaches on the outside, kinda like a pirate flag being raised on a captured vessel.
So these researchers have found a way to insert an antibody that looks only for the pirate flags, not the virus itself and not the "navy" of the immune system. So it goes out looking for that flag, then hangs a giant fucking neon sign that the immune system can't possibly ignore, which then comes around and disables the cell from replicating the virus before enough copies are made for the virus to do anything.
But why can't the immune system see the pirate flag itself you ask? Why does it need the giant neon sign? Well,
This is exciting news, but what's even more exciting is the following:
Which means that we could conceivably, like, within my own lifetime, get a vaccine one time that protects me from every friggin virus family we have and possibly even all future mutations of these viruses!
AND this same phosphatidylseriene footprint is found ... get this ... on TUMOR CELLS, which means this could also, potentially, prevent cancer.
They have already begun human trials against HIV and Hep-C, but it is too early to tell if it clears the infection completely in humans and testing still needs to be done on cancer cells.
Another lab is testing whether or not they can turn off selected proteins (proteins needed for replication but not necessarily required for cell function) in the host, rather than the virus, for much the same effect - preventing a wide range of viruses with one drug, rather than attacking each virus individually. It works in much the same way, since certain internal proteins of a cell end up on the outside of the cell when a virus hijacks it, so the drug targets those exposed proteins, which happen to be necessary for carrying the virus copies to other cells. This seems to work for the flu, Ebola, HIV and Herpes in early tests and also reduces HIV to below detectable levels in human cultures. Since it's the same protein no matter which virus is doing the hijacking, it's yet another opportunity for "one drug = all viruses" treatment.
There's another drug that this article says the scientists aren't really sure *how* it works, just that 100% of Ebola-infected mice survived when given the drug 1 day after Ebola infection. Survival rates dropped as days passed, but all the way up to 4 days post-infection was still a 40% survival rate for a disease that is fatal only 7 days after infection.
So, very exciting stuff in the field of infectious diseases lately!
There are several research projects going on right now that are about a single anti-viral therapy that prevents several viruses at the same time. The most exciting one, I think, is the one mentioned last in the article.
In healthy cells, certain molecules are found only on the inner surface of the cell membrane. These molecules include a fatty substance called phosphatidylserine, one of the most common constituents of cell membranes. When cells are stressed - when infected by a virus, for instance - some phosphatidylserine ends up on the outer face of the membrane. "It's clearly present on all the virally infected cells we've dealt with," says Thorpe. "It stands out like a beacon." ...
Thorpe and his colleagues have designed an antibody, now known as bavituximab, that binds to exposed phosphatidylserine. Once bavituximab binds to an infected cell, the immune system should quickly destroy it, limiting viral replication.
In layman's terms, what happens is a virus enters the body, enters a cell, and takes it hostage. It tells the cell to stop doing whatever it's doing and just make copies of the virus. When that happens, a particular molecule gets spit out of the cell and attaches on the outside, kinda like a pirate flag being raised on a captured vessel.
So these researchers have found a way to insert an antibody that looks only for the pirate flags, not the virus itself and not the "navy" of the immune system. So it goes out looking for that flag, then hangs a giant fucking neon sign that the immune system can't possibly ignore, which then comes around and disables the cell from replicating the virus before enough copies are made for the virus to do anything.
But why can't the immune system see the pirate flag itself you ask? Why does it need the giant neon sign? Well,
many common viruses wrap themselves in the cell membrane of their host cells as they bud off. This membrane "envelope" may act as an invisibility cloak, allowing a virus to hide from the immune system. Bavituximab, however, will bind to this cloak, revealing the viruses to the immune system. So, at least in theory, bavituximab should also trigger the destruction of enveloped viruses before they infect cells
This is exciting news, but what's even more exciting is the following:
The company developing bavituximab, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals of Tustin, California, is now testing it against a variety of other viruses, including HIV, hepatitis C, influenza, measles and members of the smallpox and rabies virus families. So far, every virus they have checked has left a phosphatidylserine footprint.
Which means that we could conceivably, like, within my own lifetime, get a vaccine one time that protects me from every friggin virus family we have and possibly even all future mutations of these viruses!
AND this same phosphatidylseriene footprint is found ... get this ... on TUMOR CELLS, which means this could also, potentially, prevent cancer.
They have already begun human trials against HIV and Hep-C, but it is too early to tell if it clears the infection completely in humans and testing still needs to be done on cancer cells.
Another lab is testing whether or not they can turn off selected proteins (proteins needed for replication but not necessarily required for cell function) in the host, rather than the virus, for much the same effect - preventing a wide range of viruses with one drug, rather than attacking each virus individually. It works in much the same way, since certain internal proteins of a cell end up on the outside of the cell when a virus hijacks it, so the drug targets those exposed proteins, which happen to be necessary for carrying the virus copies to other cells. This seems to work for the flu, Ebola, HIV and Herpes in early tests and also reduces HIV to below detectable levels in human cultures. Since it's the same protein no matter which virus is doing the hijacking, it's yet another opportunity for "one drug = all viruses" treatment.
There's another drug that this article says the scientists aren't really sure *how* it works, just that 100% of Ebola-infected mice survived when given the drug 1 day after Ebola infection. Survival rates dropped as days passed, but all the way up to 4 days post-infection was still a 40% survival rate for a disease that is fatal only 7 days after infection.
So, very exciting stuff in the field of infectious diseases lately!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 8/14/09 05:24 pm (UTC)From: