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More potent ways to design HIV drugs found
- In perhaps the most comprehensive survey of the inner workings of HIV, an international team of scientists has mapped every apparent physical interaction the virus makes with components of the human cells it infects.
- The survey reveals a pathogenic landscape in which HIV's handful of proteins makes hundreds of physical connections with human proteins and other components inside the cell. Labs investigated
one such connection in detail. They discovered that an HIV protein called Vif makes a physical connection with a human protein called CBF-â, hijacking its function. - Disrupting these connections may interfere with HIV's lifecycle, and the existence of so many new connections suggests there may be several novel ways to target the virus.
- Of the 497 specific interactions between HIV and human proteins discovered in the new work, only 19 of those were previously reported.
- Interfering with this association may be a way to block the virus.
- Ultimately, if scientists can design compounds to do this safely and effectively, those compounds could form the basis for a new type of HIV/AIDS treatment.
