[Ip-health] AP: Researchers Add to HIV Protein List In Step Toward Finding New Drugs

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

Researchers Add to HIV Protein List
In Step Toward Finding New Drugs
Associated Press
January 10, 2008 2:42 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- The AIDS virus has to hijack human proteins to do its
damage, but scientists until now have known only a few dozen of its
targets. On Thursday, Harvard researchers unveiled a surprisingly
longer list, an important first step in the hunt for new drugs.

HIV is on its face a simple virus, consisting of just nine genes. Yet
it makes up for that bare-bones structure in a sinister and complex
way -- by literally taking over the cellular machinery of its victims
so it can multiply and then destroy.

The proteins it exploits have been dubbed HIV dependency factors, and
36 had been discovered. The new research, published online Thursday by
the journal Science, found 273 of these potential HIV targets.

Led by geneticist Stephen Elledge of Brigham and Women's Hospital, the
team used a technique called RNA interference that can disrupt a
gene's ability to do its job and make a protein. One by one, they
disrupted thousands of human genes in test tubes, dropped in some HIV,
and watched what happened. If HIV couldn't grow well, it signaled the
protein that the gene that had failed to produce must be the reason.

It will take far more research to figure out the role each of these
proteins plays in HIV's life cycle.

But most of today's AIDS drugs work by targeting the HIV virus itself.
In August, the government approved sale of the first drug that works
by blocking an HIV dependency factor, a cellular doorway called CCR5.
The hope is that this longer list of those factors will point toward
spots where similar drugs might work.

Copyright =A9 2008 Associated Press

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


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