HIV-1
sa smith | February 6, 2016Listen, nobody thinks the guy who 'cured Charlie Sheen of HIV' cured Charlie Sheen of HIV.
Even Charlie Sheen.
Dr Sam
I was with u in
Mexico for
1 day.
It's illegal for u
to practice in
U.S.A. where u
treated me for 2 months
© https://t.co/lKv6YPYdhm
— Charlie Sheen (@charliesheen) February 1, 2016
... But what if he could, tho?
What would this super awesome therapy THE MAN doesnt want you to know about look like? How would it work?
That would be a fun and educational game to play!
Okay, to play this game you first have to understand what 'CAEV' is. Caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus is a…
sa smith | November 17, 2015ERV-->TMZ?
No, this is an education and outreach opportunity, and I want to use it to the best of my ability as an HIV researcher.
1-- I am so glad Charlie Sheen got tested for HIV. Most people who should be, dont, because even faced with a treatable, deadly disease, denial is *incredibly* attractive. 'If I dont know, then it cant be real' is a tall hurdle *many* of us will have to clear for some reason, at some point in our lives. Sheen got tested, and that is the first step to stopping HIV.
2-- "I have to... I have to. I am here to admit, in fact, I am HIV positive."
*wince*
'Coming out…
sa smith | July 7, 2015So the guy who faked some HIV research results is officially going to spend about five years in jail, and has to pay back $7 million.
Former ISU scientist's stiff fraud sentence sends message
Yeah. It does send a message. The message is "The US government is not going to really investigate any of this, but every now and then we are going to go after some random nobody 'to send a message'".
My opinion on this topic has not changed in a year.
Oh! Thank god someone finally did something about that tyrant assistant professor from Iowa who fucked up, got caught, admitted what he did, and showed…
sa smith | April 8, 2015You all know me.
There are two things I really love:
Studying HIV
Using viruses for gene therapy
One would think I would be over-the-moon about the FDA approving human trials for a gene therapy to stop HIV. HIV! Gene therapy! YAY!!
With HIV Cure as the Goal, Gene Therapy Research Expands
When this line of research initially emerged, I WAS super excited:
GMO in GMOs used to make GMO cells to treat HIV
Go read that.
Now, just to be clear, that was in no way a 'functional cure'. No one in that small trial was 'functionally cured'. But I still thought it was a great, creative step in a positive…
sa smith | December 10, 2014New, weird, out-of-left-field, ideas-- we need them to stop HIV.
This one makes sense, in retrospect, but I wouldnt have thought to try what these folks did:
Targeting α4β7 integrin reduces mucosal transmission of simian immunodeficiency virus and protects gut-associated lymphoid tissue from infection
Background info: HIV loves to rip through CD4+ T-cells in gut-associated lymphoid tissue. Early in infection, HIV tears those cells up, and anything HIV doesnt kill, it digs in as a latent reservoir to pop out more babby viruses later. Doesnt matter if you ultimately take anti-retrovirals, the…
sa smith | December 9, 2014Five kids in the first trial.
Then eleven.
Now thirty (ultimately 39):
Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells for Sustained Remissions in Leukemia
Slowly but surely, HIV genetically modified to genetically modify relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients T-cells are prolonging (saving?) kids lives.
Ive written about this treatment a couple times before:
‘Dismal prognosis’ with leukemia? Nothing a GMO virus cant fix.
GMO virus vs B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Why is this not a standard therapy yet??
Basically, scientists get HIV to teach cancer patients Cytotoxic T-cells how to…
sa smith | December 5, 2014For some reason, pop news became enamored with this paper last month (unfortunately while I was away at a conference):
HIV infection en route to endogenization: two cases
Inexplicable media frenzy--
Scientists find mechanism for spontaneous HIV cure
French scientists find genetic mechanism by which two men were spontaneously cured of HIV.
HIV discovery offers new lead in finding cure
I have a lot of problems with this paper. Starting with the first sentence.
The long-term spontaneous evolution between humans and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is not well characterized.
"Spontaneous…
sa smith | December 4, 2014I write about lots of things on ERV, but I didnt anticipate ever getting to the point where I can write new blog posts on new publications by cutting and pasting from old blog posts on old papers...
Lots of news outlets have been talking about this new paper:
Impact of HLA-driven HIV adaptation on virulence in populations of high HIV seroprevalence
Ive covered the themes of this paper several times in the past.
1-- Some people progress to AIDS after HIV infection, some dont, or do so slowly. One of the reasons why one person might not progress to AIDS would be their particular MHC Class I…
sa smith | September 29, 2014You get the data when you get the data, but the information we get from this study would have been useful several years ago:
Persistence of Virus Reservoirs in ART-Treated SHIV-Infected Rhesus Macaques after Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant
The Berlin Patient-- Guy gets HIV, develops a blood cancer, gets radiation and chemo for the cancer, a bone marrow transplant from someone who lacks the CCR5 receptor-- one of the co-receptors HIV prefers to use to infect our cells. Years later, he is still HIV free.
How did this procedure work?
The factors thought to be involved in the…
sa smith | September 24, 2014For quite a while, now, there has been a connection between Endogenous Retroviruses and HIV. For some unknown reason, some of the young ERVs in humans, the ones that can still code for a protein here and there, are reactivated in HIV+ patients. Scientists have found ERV RNA in HIV+ patient plasma, and they have even found cytotoxic T-cells that target ERV proteins.
HIVs controlled by HERVs
This lead some scientists to believe that maybe, maybe, ERVs could be a good target for an anti-HIV therapy.
HIV changes a lot. It is really hard to train your immune system to fight it.
ERVs are 'human',…
sa smith | August 29, 2014This is not, in any way, a 'clean' blog. But I cannot type my genuine reaction to this news:
Shift of HIV Tropism in Stem-Cell Transplantation with CCR5 Delta32 Mutation
I have not stopped cussing since I heard about this.
God dammit, HIV.
God DAMMIT.
We had ONE THING.
ONE THING that WORKED to CURE HIV.
And it has been taken away, in a very big way.
*sigh*
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, we cured one man of HIV infection (more, more, more). You might know him as 'The Berlin Patient'. Long story short, he got a blood cancer, got a bone marrow transplant from someone who was…
sa smith | August 7, 2014Ive written about modifying plants to do lots of fun things (vaccines, counter allergies, etc) in the past:
Green our vaccines!
Green our vaccines! Part II
Green our vaccines! Part III
Green our vaccines! Part IV
Unfortunately, this kind of technology has been held back by luddite/anti-biotechnology pressure from the general public. It has *not* moved forward as much as it could have:
About 15 years ago, it was thought that genetically engineered crops would be widely used to produce human proteins for use as drugs. When Dr. Whaley and Dr. Zeitlin (the scientists behind the anti-Ebola therapy…
sa smith | July 29, 2014"HIV mutates a lot".
People 'get' that. Why is HIV hard to stop? Why is HIV hard to treat? "HIV mutates a lot".
But HIV does not mutate willy-nilly. It mutates at an evolutionarily defined rate.
The reverse transcriptase enzyme makes mistakes during replication that are beneficial to HIV-- creating a diverse population, a quasispecies, that can 'answer' the multitude of evolutionary 'problems' the population faces. A homogeneous population would be wiped out by a particularly efficient antibody, or a targeting drug, but a diverse population means that somewhere in a population of billions,…
sa smith | July 21, 2014Some of you might remember the waves made earlier this year about 'The Immunity Project'. They were crowdsourcing an HIV vaccine that was magical and amazing and they were totally going to give it away for free!!
YAY!
... Except 'The Immunity Project' basically had nothing to back their claims up.
No publications, the investigators had no connection to HIV vaccine research, and the marketing claims made by 'The Immunity Project' were outlandish (more from Skeptical Raptor).
We were assured that a publication was in the works, and to their credit, that publication is now available in a peer-…
sa smith | July 14, 2014Though ERVs are my favorite tool vs Creationists, HIV is a fantastic choice as well.
I mean, has anyone seen hide or hair of Behe since 2007?
Poor guy.
Alas, there are still Creationists out there, so to address some of their 'concerns', c0nc0rdance made a couple of vids using his favorite HIV protein, Vpr:
sa smith | July 11, 2014Of course, SciBlogs is in the middle of a Wordpress update when this news breaks:
'Mississippi Baby' now has detectable HIV, researchers find
Some of you might remember last year, when there was exciting news about a baby, born with HIV, who had subsequently become HIV- thanks to an alternative treatment strategy (basically, give babby HAART ASAP).
The end of last year, the physicians associated with the babby finally published some of their observations.
This led to a rush of 'Me too!' physicians, either trying the same approach, or reporting on their previous HAART attempts. Theres nothing…
sa smith | June 26, 2014Remember this?
Wait, what? Faked HIV vaccine results
The researcher accused of manipulating his reagents to 'show his HIV vaccine strategy worked' admitted he did it:
Investigators say former Iowa State University laboratory manager Dong-Pyou Han has confessed to spiking samples of rabbit blood with human antibodies to make an experimental HIV vaccine appear to have great promise.
And the government is prosecuting him for it:
Responding to a major case of research misconduct, federal prosecutors have taken the rare step of filing charges against a scientist after he admitted falsifying data…
sa smith | June 16, 2014Well, you cant say Brian Dunning doesnt put his money where his mouth is when it comes to his skepticism about homeopathy:
I’ve been speaking with lab managers, AIDS researchers, and doctors about my plan to make a documentary short film about drawing blood from an HIV-positive patient, properly making a 30C homeopathic dilution of it using safe, legal laboratory procedures, and then drinking it.
:-/
From a statistical standpoint, his risk of acquiring HIV from his proposed method is low. Assuming he found someone to 'donate' HIV that was at acute infection or end-stage AIDS, the highest…
sa smith | May 5, 2014The first and second baby, apparently 'cured' of HIV after being infected at birth, lived in the US. In the US, the standard treatment for an at-risk baby is wait for a firm HIV diagnosis before administering HAART. But when Baby #1 and Baby #2 got HAART ASAP, they are functionally 'cured' of HIV, and there was hope that this aggressive approach would be able to help the >200,000 babies infected with HIV every year.
Well, in Canada, the standard treatment for potentially HIV+ babies is the more aggressive approach that 'cured' the two babies in the US.
So, after US physicians announced…
sa smith | April 1, 2014Long-time readers of ERV know that I am not a fan of Pre-Exposure Prophylactics as a regular means of preventing HIV infection. In tightly controlled clinical trials, giving people who might be exposed to HIV anti-HIV drugs does lower infection rates... but when the same protocol is let loose 'out in the wild', the results are not as good. Some are disastrously bad.
And thats just following infection rates-- Thats not even addressing the long-term effects sub-optimal levels of antiretrovirals has on the HIV population.
A major problem with 'The Pill' to prevent HIV is that people do not take…