A team of scientists from the University of California Los Anges (UCLA) proposes a novel way to force the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) out of the cells via a kick-and-kill strategy. Through this, the virus will become vulnerable to injections of natural killer cells produced by the immune system.
The United Nations (UN) estimated that around 38 million people worldwide live with HIV and it caused 36 million deaths in the past decades. If the novel technique is refined and proven effective in clinical trials, it could become a new cure for HIV patients who depend on antiretroviral drugs.
HIV Hides From Body's Immune System
Scientists have long known that HIV is difficult to cure because the virus hides from the immune system. In 2020, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine found that HIV specifically hides in lymphocytes or white blood cells, making them hard to kill because white cells are intrinsically resistant to killer T cells.
Currently, HIV patients take antiretrovirals to control the virus. But they are expensive and increase the risk of heart disease and some cancers. If they stop taking these medications, the virus can become active within weeks and make a cure elusive.
Scientists found that HIV does not only hide but endures in reservoir cells as they have developed immunity against killer T cells. They also overexpress the gene BCL-2 resulting in the elevated production of the BCL-2 protein, responsible for helping HIV-infected cells to survive.
When they tried treating HIV reservoir cells using experimental latency-reversing agents that will reactivate the virus to make it visible to the immune system, they observed a reduction in reservoir cells. Scientists would like to further explore other active components of the reservoir cells to see if there are more treatment targets.
The new study from the team of researchers at UCLA attempts to do the same by activating the HIV to make it visible but relying on natural immune cells to kill the virus.
A New HIV Cure? How Does the Kick-and-Kill Strategy Works?
Infectious disease expert Jocelyn Kim from UCLA led the study, titled "Latency Reversal Plus Natural Killer Cells Diminish HIV Reservoir in Vivo," published in Nature Communications. The study shows a proof-of-concept for a therapeutic technique to eliminate HIV from the body.
According to MailOnline, the team's strategy was first proposed in 2017 that was recently improved. Researchers explained that the kick-and-kill strategy tricks the dormant virus in the infected cells to become visible using a compound known as SUW133. In that way, immune cells can target and eliminate HIV.
The team's previous study showed that HIV-infected mice who were both treated with SUW133 and antiretrovirals were able to kill 25% of infected cells. But using the natural killer cells produced by the immune system, the team said they could flush HIV out of hiding and completely clear the virus in 4 out of 10 mice.
They are now working to refine their strategy to eliminate HIV in 100% of the mice cohorts successfully. More so, they plan on moving their experiment to non-human primates toward preclinical trials with the ultimate goal of testing the strategy on humans in the future.
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