BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?

Subject: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:05 AM

-URL-

C&P'd from The Globe And Mail

Rutgers researchers may have stopped HIV
Associated Press         

Piscataway, N.J. — Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.

The drugs, called DAPYs, mimic the virus by changing shape, which enables them to interfere with the way HIV attacks the immune system.

Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients.

"This could be it," Stephen Smith, the head of the department of infectious diseases at Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, said. "We're all looking for the next class of drugs."

A research team led by Rutgers chemist Eddy Arnold pre-published details of the most promising of the three drugs, known as R278474, last month in the electronic edition of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Full details will be published in the journal in early 2005.

Dr. Arnold, 47, has worked at dismantling the AIDS virus over the last 20 years. He uses X-ray crystallography, a technique to determine the structure of molecules, the smallest particles that can retain all the characteristics of an element or compound.

The research has targeted reverse transcriptase, a submiscroscopic protein composed of two coiled chains of amino acids. It is considered HIV's key protein.

"Reverse transcriptase is very important in the biology of AIDS," Dr. Smith said. "If you can really inhibit reverse transcriptase, you can stop AIDS."

The optimism about R278474 stems from its potential to interfere with an enzyme that the virus needs to copy and insert itself into a human cell.

"We're onto something very, very special," Dr. Arnold said.

Dr. Arnold established his lab at Rutgers' Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine in 1987. His current 30-member research team is partnered with Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries Janssen Pharmaceutica and Tibotec-Virco NV.

An important advancement in Dr. Arnold's research came in 1990 when Belgian scientist Paul Janssen was added to the collaboration. Dr. Janssen, considered a drug pioneer, published a paper that year that described a new drug that blocked reverse transcriptase but caused resistant strains of the virus to pop up too quickly.

Dr. Janssen sought out Dr. Arnold, who used crystallography to detail the structure of RT. Their work ultimately led to the RT inhibitors.

"We may eventually win the war against HIV/AIDS. That would be an extremely rewarding and satisfying outcome," Dr. Arnold said.


How's that for a little good news eh...

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:15 AM

Please God it works, what a breakthrough this would be.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:18 AM

Oh, God yes! Please! So much suffering around the world....

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:36 AM

I feel like an ass for posting here at all but a comment seems required. Ditto the above.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Once Famous
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:40 AM

Though it affects everybody, I am sure the gay community will be the most relieved.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Amergin
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:43 AM

Well according to DR. Bobert all you have to do to cure AIDS is feed the patients....

I found this buried in the bbc site:

Children as Guinea Pigs

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:51 AM

What a blessing that would be. I hope that it is all that it promises and that there are no side effects that send a bodily system crashing. There have been so many 'fixes' in modern society where it turned out that the cure is worse than the disease...

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:53 AM

Not the time to bring up old threads as much as keeping our fingers crossed that this will really be a cure. I have had too many friends die of this disease to want to argue. Better energy spent on hoping for this to work.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 12:32 PM

X----crossed fingers. 'gin, that is APPALLING!

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Peace
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 12:38 PM

Also crossed fingers.

Amergin: That is one of the most disgusting things I have read in quite a while. However, I'm not at all surprised. I wonder how long the lawyers will tie this up for.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 01:32 PM

Let us praise that focussed and helpful intelligence that Eddy Arnold and his mates have brought to bear on the problem over two decades. That kind of quality does a lot to restore my faith in the species!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 01:55 PM

Will it be affordable? Or available only to the wealthy and those with medical coverage?

I have talked about my experiences with the NYC Foster Care System. this story doesn't surprise me. No doubt a lot of money changed hands and the children to a back seat to greed.

Subject: but they can't stop AIDS
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 03:48 PM

Even if they can stop that there HIV virus, it won't do nothin' to stop AIDS.

The whole story about HIV causin' AIDS is a made up one by the scientific, government grant eatin', science establishment.

How do I know that? 'Cause the greatest scientific, medical mind in all of Mudcat, good ol' Doc Bobert, says that HIV don't cause AIDS.

I never listen to those media scientists. I only trust Doc Bobert at Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 08:23 AM

This sounds like it would do nothing to completely stop the transmission of the virus. It sounds like it only will diminish the replication of the virus within an individual.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: vectis
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 07:14 PM

It's a start. The world really needs a vaccine which prevents infection. It needs to be cheap enough for mass vaccination then, like smallpox, it needs to be available worldwide so the virus is stopped in its tracks.
Money and morality will probably prevent an effective worldwide programme wiping the thing out effectively for another generation though.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: mg
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 07:42 PM

I surely hope it works and is cheap and available. And I hope that people understand that the particular disease is not the main thing to focus on - but the behavior. As the president of one of the African countries, who himself lost children to the disease, "abstain or die." Fix this disease, and given the perfect environment for transmission of other diseases, they will flourish. New ones, old ones like syphilis....I suspect that a lot of religion was developed to stop the transmission of diseases. There is no way that I can think of to stop AIDs or other diseases short of reverting to older standards of behavior, and not being afraid to at least suggest them for others. We are more afraid that someone will be sexually frustrated or that we will overstep some cultural boundary than we are that they will die and leave six children orphans and probably infected themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 08:11 PM

mary:

It's not that I'm afraid someone will _be_ sexually frustrated; it's that I don't trust them to _stay_ sexually frustrated.

Those old standards of behavior didn't work too well. anyway; it wasn't Victorian morality that got rid of most syph & gonorrhea.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: GUEST,marks
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 08:38 PM

Its great news and now that success has been shown, maybe we can devote the next effort to cancer or other degenerative diseases. Nothing like a little success to prime the pump for further efforts.

Subject: RE: BS: Researchers may have stopped HIV ?
From: mg
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 12:59 AM

they didn't get rid of the diseases, but think how many more there would have been in those days if everyone had even low numbers of multiple partners? mg