The latest breakthrough in AIDS research: using gene editing technology to remove HIV from animals

Source: Biovalley 2017-05-05 millions of people around the world are living with HIV But scientists and medical experts have yet to find a permanent way to treat AIDS, and researchers have only made some new breakthroughs: they have tried to eliminate HIV-1 infection in mice According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 36 million people around the world are HIV positive, and about 1.2 million people are infected with the virus Although there is no cure for this HIV infection, scientists are closer to finding such a cure Using a gene editing technique called CRISPR / cas9, the researchers successfully removed HIV-1 previrus from three animal models The three mouse models used in the current study include a "anthropomorphic" model, in which mice are genetically modified to produce human immune cells and then infect them with HIV-1 The research team was co led by Dr Wenhui Hu, associate professor of the Department of pathology and the Research Center for metabolic diseases at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (lksom), University of temple, Philadelphia, as well as Dr kamel Khalili, Laura H Carnell, Professor of Neuroscience at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (lksom), and Won Bin young, who recently joined the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (lksom) The latest research is published in the journal molecular therapy Dr Hu and his team inactivated HIV-1, significantly reducing the RNA expression of virus genes in organs and tissues of transgenic mice Specifically, RNA expression decreased by about 60% - 95% This is the first time that researchers have successfully prevented HIV-1 replication and completely eliminated it from infected cells in animals The team also provided the first evidence that HIV-1 infection can be eradicated successfully and that CRISPR / cas9 gene editing strategy can be used to prevent HIV infection This study is considered to be "an important step towards human clinical trials", which represents a breakthrough in HIV treatment (BIOON Com)