Dutch scientists have successfully eliminated HIV from certain cells using CRISPR-Cas9 “genetic scissors” technology.
- Dutch researchers have just presented the promising results of a new anti-HIV therapy based on the DNA editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9, “molecular scissors” which make it possible to delete or correct a defective gene.
- The major challenge in treating HIV is the ability of the virus to integrate its genome into the host’s DNA, making it extremely difficult to eliminate. However, researchers have succeeded in targeting HIV DNA and removing all traces of the virus from infected cells in the laboratory, which were thus “cured”.
- This is a “crucial advance” but it is only a first step, according to scientists. Because if the tests have proven positive on the scale of a cell, their effectiveness must still be tested and demonstrated on an individual.
New hope for treating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a treatable but incurable disease which affects around 6,000 new people each year in France.
A team of scientists has just presented the promising results of a new anti-HIV therapy based on the DNA editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9, “molecular scissors” which make it possible to cut, replace, inactivate, correct the gene that we are trying to achieve. In this case, to directly attack the virus lodged in the cells.
HIV: cells infected in the laboratory “cured” thanks to genetic scissors
The major challenge in treating HIV is the ability of the virus to integrate its genome into the host’s DNA, making it extremely difficult to eliminate. However, using revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 technology, researchers at the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, claim to have succeeded in targeting HIV DNA and removing all traces of the virus from cells (T lymphocytes). infected in the laboratory, which were thus “cured”. They specify that they specifically aimed “parts of the HIV genome that remain the same across all known strains of the virus”, in order to be able to fight, in the long term, “against multiple variants of HIV”.
This is only a first step, scientists admit. Because if the tests have proven positive on the scale of a cell, their effectiveness must still be tested and demonstrated on an individual. “Our work only represents a proof of concept […] It is premature to declare that there is a working cure for HIV on the horizon, they explain in a communicated. The next step will be to optimize the route of administration to target the majority of cells in the HIV reservoir. Only then can we consider clinical trials of ‘cure’ in humans.”
A significant step towards a cure for HIV
This study, which must be presented at the end of April in Barcelona during the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), nevertheless constitutes “a crucial step forward” to find a real cure for AIDS. Although there is today a treatment – antiretroviral drugs – which slows the development of HIV and drastically increases the life expectancy of HIV-positive people, cases of completely cured patients remain extremely rare.