http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_med_gene_therapy

 

French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence. The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn't cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene.

 

I personally find breakthroughs in health like this amazing, who knows what other diseases this could also cure.

 

Discuss

I can just see the billboard, "Who says AIDS is a bad thing?". :grin:

 

But seriously, that's quite an interesting method that they used as a cure. Hopefully they could put bad diseases such as HIV to a better use in the future.

Isn't this sort of like 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'?

They knocked out the virulent genes of HIV and merely used it as a vector (a trojan horse if you will) to take the gene of interest into myelin-forming stem cells in bone marrow.

 

It's not like they just infected these kids with HIV, you know. (read the article people, please)

 

But as for my thoughts, I think it's great progress. I'm not sure how they ensure this kind of thing doesn't cause cancer, but if it's still a hurdle for gene therapy approaches like this then hopefully it can be corrected somehow.

 

Edit: Here's a better link on the story:

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105143706.htm

Don't doctors inject people with certain kinds of viruses to cure people. I think that they inject people with the flu to get rid of it or prevent it.

Don't doctors inject people with certain kinds of viruses to cure people. I think that they inject people with the flu to get rid of it or prevent it.

Thats what vaccines are.

Don't doctors inject people with certain kinds of viruses to cure people. I think that they inject people with the flu to get rid of it or prevent it.

Thats what vaccines are.

 

Yeah, an incapacitated form of the virus, or just bits and pieces of it. Certainly nothing that could give you the full adverse effects of the disease. Kind of defeats the purpose of vaccines in the first place.

Don't doctors inject people with certain kinds of viruses to cure people. I think that they inject people with the flu to get rid of it or prevent it.

Thats what vaccines are.

 

Yeah, an incapacitated form of the virus, or just bits and pieces of it. Certainly nothing that could give you the full adverse effects of the disease. Kind of defeats the purpose of vaccines in the first place.

 

Yeah, I was thinking that much. That being said, it's an interesting method and we'll have to see the results.

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

Isn't this sort of like 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'?

 

Haha, that's what I thought.

 

The doctor comes in and says "Well, boys, we managed to cure your brain tumor, but we regret to inform you that you both have AIDs. Enjoy the next few years that you have left!"

In the article, it mentioned that it was harmless to them...So in other words, they're going to be able to live normally? Or can they pass it on sexually?

The lack of reading comprehension here is seriously annoying. The HIV virus is NON-VIRULENT.

 

It's a mechanism to get a gene into a cell. That's all. It doesn't give you AIDS.

 

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

 

What exactly are you reading to make you say that? The modified HIV virus infects a cell, delivering a gene to negate a mutation in the original gene.

Jared has AIDS.

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

 

Thank Louis Pasteur? The process has only been around for over a hundred years.

this is fantastic news :)

Basically its just another step to eradicating AIDS.

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

 

Thank Louis Pasteur? The process has only been around for over a hundred years.

 

What process is that?

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

 

Thank Louis Pasteur? The process has only been around for over a hundred years.

 

What process is that?

I think he is talking about vaccination.

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

 

Thank Louis Pasteur? The process has only been around for over a hundred years.

 

What process is that?

I think he is talking about vaccination.

 

Two reasons why I ask:

 

1) Vaccination would be using one virus the same type of virus, not another.

2) It has nothing to do with this thread whatsoever. I'm struggling to understand how some people can be so far from the subject matter here after there have been two articles posted on it.

 

Allow me to summarise:

 

Scientists have removed critical genes from HIV to make it non-virulent (i.e. it's not going to give you AIDS)

They then inserted the same gene that causes adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), but without the incapacitating mutations, into the HIV virus. They're basically looking to repair these mutations to cure ALD.

They used the virus to infect blood stem cells in vitro and inserted them back into the patients

The blood stem cells that differentiate into myelin-producing cells grow and produce the protein (the ALD protein) that was previously mutated. Myelin is a fatty "cling-wrap" found around nerve cell axons to help send the nerve signal. In ALD, myelin is degraded.

The new gene in these cells helps prevent the onset of symptoms assoiated with ALD by helping to maintain myelin.

 

HSCs are blood stem cells.

They knocked out the virulent genes of HIV and merely used it as a vector (a trojan horse if you will) to take the gene of interest into myelin-forming stem cells in bone marrow.

 

It's not like they just infected these kids with HIV, you know. (read the article people, please)

Yes, exactly.

 

It's not like this is new. Yes, HIV is not often used (adenoviruses and the semliki-forest virus are often candidates), but the whole procedure has been used for a long time. However, what is interesting here is that they actually pulled it off to make stem cells migrate to the brain and differentiate into some sort of oligodendrocytes (so I have to correct you here, a myelin-forming cell is no stem cell anymore. The article is just plain wrong). Also, your links stated that the viruses were transformed into basic lentiviral vectors which were originally derived from HIV. Lentiviral factors are actually quite common. So basically it's not that exciting although the HIV derived part is new.

 

HIV is actually a quite logical virus to make into a vector. HIV can infect lymphocytes which are derived from the blood. So they're probably prone to infect the blood stem cells (hematopoietic stem cells) in the bone marrow.

 

Oh and "stem cell" might just not be the correct term. The cells that were selected are CD34+ cells. A marker which is expressed on hematopoietic stem cells, but it is not exclusive for these HSCs.

 

What I'm still wondering about is if they did something to direct the blood cells to the brain.. some sort of chemoattractant or cause disruption of the blood brain barrier. I wonder how they made the transduced cells actually go to the place where they are needed. The article states only 15% of the cells produced the right protein, though the neurological symptoms already declined. Maybe if they were to optimize it by selectively sending the cells to the brain, this would be an even bigger success. Secondly, I don't get why they only sorted the cells for the CD34+ marker. Other markers for HSCs are known and could be used to create a more pure culture of HSCs.

 

Interesting.

Bauke, you seem to know what you're talking about. What's your educational background? I'm not questioning your post or anything, I'm just curious.

These new types of cures for normal ailments is a lot more common than you might think. Companies like Genentech are developing drugs that take bacteria and "program" them in a sense to attack various types of cancer. Not only is this much more effective than conventional medicine, but it could become extremely common as technology advances enough that DNA in any type of bacteria can be modified to help fight off diseases and fatal conditions.

Even though I have very little interest in the sciences, this is still very interesting to read, using a dud virus (i forgot what the word was for this) to destroy another virus. I know they've done similar things in the past, but I think this is the first time I've seen HIV used to kill a brain-destroying virus. very fascinating.

The lack of reading comprehension here is seriously annoying. The HIV virus is NON-VIRULENT.

 

It's a mechanism to get a gene into a cell. That's all. It doesn't give you AIDS.

 

Using one virus to kill another. That's one of the craziest (and therefore best) ideas I have ever heard of people actually pulling off in real life. God, I love science.

 

What exactly are you reading to make you say that? The modified HIV virus infects a cell, delivering a gene to negate a mutation in the original gene.

 

 

I thought this was some sort of virus causing the 2 boys' brain disease. I haven't heard of any process that could effectively use one virus (albeit a modified one) to neutralize and destroy another after infection. This basically rewrites an entire chapter in the rule book of infections. Which, if people know anything about medicine, is a pretty big thing.

Ever watched House? This was in one of the episodes, lol.

I don't watch House very much. Also, I somewhat expect television shows to pull things from the sci-fi realm (specifically, the near future one for this sort of show), and they don't always represent what can be done in the real world.