The steps towards finding the cure of deadly virus HIV is getting close everyday.
And a Kenyan doctor has moved closer with another big inch.
The PHD holder, Dr. Benson Edagwa working from University of Nebraska Medical Centre based in states; has together with a team of medical experts found a new way that could see the virus eliminated from the body of the victims better than before.
With his team from UNMC and the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM), they successful for the first time eliminated replication-competent HIV-1 DNA — the virus responsible for AIDS from an animal.
“This achievement could not have been possible without an extraordinary team effort that included virologists, immunologists, molecular biologists, pharmacologists, and pharmaceutical experts,” said Howard Gendelman, M.D., Margaret R. Larson Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, chair of the UNMC Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience and director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.
The research marked a critical step towards eradication of the life sucking disease.
“Our study shows that treatment to suppress HIV replication and gene editing therapy, when given sequentially, can eliminate HIV from cells and organs of infected animals,” said Kamel Khalili, Ph.D., Laura H. Carnell Professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience, director of the Center for Neurovirology, and director of the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Center at LKSOM.
The only means through which HIV/AIDS is being treated now is only through the use of ARV aka antiretroviral therapy (ART) which suppresses the spread of the HIV virus but does not eliminate the virus from the body
ARVs do not cure the virus because when one stops taking them, the virus comes back even much stronger and attacks the individual again.
HIV rebound is directly attributed to the ability of the virus to integrate its DNA sequence into the genomes of cells in the immune system, where it lies dormant and beyond the reach of antiretroviral drugs.
Kenyan doctor Dr. Benson Edagwa thus developed a special drug to fight the virus, better known as long-acting slow-effective release (LASER) ART
With his medical team, they also developed CRISPR-Cas9 technology to develop a novel gene editing and gene therapy delivery system aimed at removing HIV DNA from genomes harboring the virus.
The two combined developments, LASER ART strategy with the gene editing system, successfully removed HIV DNA from genomes that were habouring them in infected mice and rats
