EDMONTON -- Researchers at the University of Alberta have made what might be a major discovery in the fight against AIDS -- a gene that blocks the HIV virus from spreading.
The watershed discovery made by Stephen Barr, a researcher in the medical microbiology and immunology department at the U of A, and his team is a gene and protein called TRIM22. It's part of the body's natural defence system and blocks late-stage HIV from multiplying and spreading.
Other scientists have discovered proteins that block HIV in the beginning of its life cycle in the body, but Barr said the highly adaptable virus found ways to change itself and evolve to overcome those proteins.
This is the first time scientists have found a gene that -- at least in a cell culture in a laboratory -- keeps late-stage viruses from leaving cells and infecting healthy cells.
With more understanding of how the gene works -- research that will take several years before it reaches the stage of human trials -- Barr aims to figure out how to turn the gene back on with new drugs or vaccines.
-- Canwest News Service
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