Experts extract anti-Ai protein in saliva, drugs expected to be clinical in 3 years

talk about AIDS, people's first reaction is often deathSure, there's no cure for thisdiseasein the world right now, but do you believe it if you were told that you could prevent it in the future? Reporters recently learned from Nanjing University, the university's medical school Professor Wu Zhiwei team made a breakthrough in anti-AIDS research, from the active protein with anti-HIV infection initially identified 16 amino acids in the region and inhibit HIV infection relatedProfessor Wu revealed that AIDS prevention drugs are expected to enter the clinic in three yearsAIDS serum as an experimental reagentinto Professor Wu Zhiwei's laboratory, two young doctoral students dressed in white coats, wearing rubber gloves, are being loaded from the country's major cooperativehospitalsreturned serum samples and other experimental materials" Are these the serums of AIDS patients? Hearing the reporter asked, doctoral student Chu Ying explained: "These serum has been inactivated treatment, the virus removed, only antibodies, no danger." He pointed to the test tube at the end of the hand said: "Here are 40 AIDS people's serum, their body produced antibodies can inhibit the replication of the virus, some can not, our task is to find a strong inhibitory antibody, it is screened out." "
oral saliva contains anti-HIV protein
Wu Zhiwei's studio is in the laboratory, the desk is filled with all kinds of research materialsProfessor Wu was in high spirits when it came to the study, which began more than a decade agoIn the 1980s and 1990s, epidemiological analysis found that the chances of AIDS spreading through oral saliva were extremely low, or largely non-Although researchers can detect HIV genes in the saliva of AIDS patients, the virus isolated from there cannot infect other cells This phenomenon leads to a bold guess: the mouth must contain some anti-HIV ingredients! Professor Wu Zhiwei, while working at New York University in the United States, began to study the separation of saliva under the human mouth, after a study of saliva composition found that saliva contains several active proteins that can fight HIV infection, especially a protein called GP340, can remove certain bacteria in the mouth, to protect teeth plays an important role " Proteins can be made up of hundreds of amino acids, but generally it can't be that the whole protein is directly involved in stopping HIV invasion, and really interacting with the virus to prevent the virus from invading cells is likely to be as seven or eight amino acids "Professor Wu Zhiwei went to Nanjing University School of Medicine, led the team and New York University to continue the "lock protein GP340 specific parts" collaborative research, the current research is to find specific functional units Wu Zhiwei, a key who found 16 amino acids, revealed that early last year they had made a breakthrough——— reducing the specific functional units of active proteins with hiv-resistant infections to 1/10 of the original protein, and finding that 16 of the 107 amino acids locked in the locked up may play a more important role in suppressing HIV infection Professor Wu told reporters that the original complete protein by more than 1600 amino acids, "shrinking the ring" to 16, found that their anti-infection activity is not the original molecular polymer After study and analysis, it is estimated that it is possible that the effect is three-dimensional structure, rather than linear peptides At present, the team continues to determine the "minimum, essential number of amino acids" involved in this segment, as well as the possible three-dimensional structure "To make it into a drug, every one or two fewer amino acids would be cost-effective, and much less difficult to synthesize, i.e the less amino acids, the easier it is to synthesize." It is understood that Professor Wu's research results have been published in professional academic journals a lot of papers, has been recognized by academic experts When will this drug enter the clinic? Professor Wu said that through the "molecular simulation" technology low-cost synthesis of drug molecules, but also need to do a series of preclinical research, determine its toxicity and a series of biochemical indicators, and complete a series of China's FDA requirements of standards
, quality assurance and a series of other standardized experiments, and strive to enter the clinic within 3 years There is no AIDS prevention drug know that the treatment of AIDS is now mainly "cocktail therapy", that is, through several different drugs, they are combined to give patients Although the treatment works well, there are several problems such as high side effects, resistance and high cost In addition, these drugs are targeted at the characteristics of the virus in the body reproduction, at different stages to interfere with the blocking of the life cycle of the virus, so as to inhibit the replication of the virus, the body of the virus load to a minimum But there is a premise: the virus must be copied to be stopped; Therefore, the existing treatment can not remove the virus Wu Zhiwei team developed a new drug has the function of prevention, at present, the world does not have a drug to prevent AIDS Referring to the drug's unique prevention mechanism, Professor Wu made an image analogy: "Viruses are sometimes like Transformers, and the part of the cell interaction is more malleable." To get into the cell, all viruses have a receptor on the cell, and the membrane protein on the virus interacts with that receptor But HIV has a different characteristic: there is a receptor CD4 on the cell light is not enough, and a co-receptor is also needed When a virus particle binds to its receptors, a structural change occurs in the membrane protein on the virus that opens up its original hidden area, allowing the virus to bind to its co-receptors and complete the process of invading the cell GP340 is by combining with that open region, so that HIV can not bind, fuse and enter cell replication with co-receptors, thus achieving the goal of preventing infection In fact, the fundamental difference between the drug and the existing therapeutic drug is that the mechanism of the drug works more time, thus playing a preventive effect, Professor Wu said He revealed that the research results are being patented