This archive report was first published on 4 July 2019.
Breakthrough in HIV Research: Kenyan Scientist Part of Team Discovering New Cure ¶
July 4, 2019
A team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre (UNMC) and the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, has made a significant breakthrough in HIV research. The team, which includes a Kenyan scientist, Dr. Benson Edagwa, has discovered a new drug that can potentially cure the virus.
The collaborative effort has inched closer to finding a cure for HIV after successfully eliminating the virus in living mice. Dr. Edagwa, an assistant professor of pharmacology at UNMC, used a combination of a modified ARV treatment and a powerful gene-editing technique, CRISPR, to keep the virus at low activity levels and snip out HIV genes from infected cells.
The team published their research in the journal Nature Communications, revealing that 30% of the animals used in the tests showed no trace of the virus. This observation is a significant step towards showing that HIV is a curable disease, according to Kamel Khalili, director of the Neurovirology and the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Centre at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine.
The new drug, LASER ART, has been proven to be effective when released slowly over a long period of time. It works by tweaking traditional anti-HIV drugs to develop a crystal structure, which is then encased in fat-soluble particles. This allows the drugs to slip through the membranes of cells in places where HIV hides, such as the liver, lymph tissue, and spleen.
According to Dr. Edagwa, Laser art medication works continuously, rather than days or weeks like conventional forms of the medicines. This breakthrough has significant implications for the millions of people living with HIV worldwide, including the 2.5 million Kenyans who are affected by the virus.
