Peptide Mix Makes HIV Self-Destruct in a Petri Dish

A new study describes a peptide cocktail that causes apoptotic cell death of HIV infected cells, with total extermination of the virus.

Researchers at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel) developed a novel approach to eradicate HIV-1 infected cells specifically and significantly, as well as to eliminate infectious virions from cultured cells. The process involves the stimulation of viral integrase (IN) enzymatic activity by the IN derived-integrase stimulatory (INS) peptide and IN derived-Rev interacting (INrs) peptides to disrupt the IN complex, combined with the prevention of virion production by the protease inhibitor Ro 31-8959.

The researchers found a correlation between increase in the integration of HIV-1 cDNA and cell death, showing that the combination of peptides that stimulate integration, together with the protease inhibitor caused apoptotic cell death of the HIV infected cells. This combination did not have any effect on noninfected cells, appearing to promote cell death only in infected cells. The researchers suggest that the results could provide a novel approach to promote the death of HIV-1 infected cells specifically, and may eventually be developed into a new and general antiviral therapy. The study was published on august 19, 2010, in Aids Research and Therapy, a publication of Biomed Central.

"Whilst this research is promising, a major caveat with these studies is that they are preliminary,” said lead author Abraham Loyter, Ph.D., of the department of biological chemistry. "So far these experiments have only been shown to 'cure' HIV from small dishes of cultured cells in the authors' laboratory, but the findings are an exciting development in the quest to eradicate this devastating global pandemic.”

A virion consists of a complete virus particle, composed of nucleic acid surrounded by a protective coat of protein called a capsid; these are formed from identical protein subunits called capsomers. One of the problems with battling HIV is that it evades the immune system by constantly changing the amino acid sequence of the proteins on the surface of the virion.

Since most viruses cannot be seen with a light microscope, scanning and transmission electron microscopes are used to visualize the virion.

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