HIV used for good?

[icerose]

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

I love this sort of stuff.

They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn't spread AIDS, then filled it with healthy genes and used it as its delivery mechnaism to help two boys.

I really hope we see more gene therapy like this and they may have found the ideal delivery unit.

Very cool.

[Gretad08]

Very cool...every cloud has a silver lining...take a horrible virus and use it for good.

[Wayne K]

I've had a lot of friends die of HIV AIDS. I'm sure they would love to know this.

[MattW]

That's great. Hopefully this becomes a foundation for many more successes.

If you can take the infectious nature of HIV cells, and make their replication strength work for other things, you could turn them loose in the body to fight any number of diseases. Cancers would be the least of the things it could work on.

[icerose]

Yeah in a way we could very well be looking at a prototype for the first nanobot. Of course it's all natural but it's the same concept. A cell level delivery. This could be used for spinal repair and a host of other things because it's the only virus that can hook into stem cells and stay there.

As an adendum when I was looking seriously at careers this specific field is one I desperately wanted to enter. It's all so fascinating.

[Zoombie]

A nanobot is a nanobot, whether its made of carbon nanotubes or little steampunk cogs or a virus.

Me? Personally? I think this is the best thing ever.

Even cooler than the cybernetic hand.

[Exir]

Cool! Nature's nanobot!

[not_HarryS]

I don't mean to dampen the tone of this thread, but....

If they can do this, which is fucking amazing, then why hasn't anyone come up with a cure for HIV itself?

Is there no global imperative, or what?

[icerose]

I don't mean to dampen the tone of this thread, but....

If they can do this, which is fucking amazing, then why hasn't anyone come up with a cure for HIV itself?

Is there no global imperative, or what?

The problem with HIV is it can dig into every cell, and it's evolving. The first step would obviously be prevention, the second would be eliminating it before it gets a foot hold, and the third would be to deal with it once it has gotten bad. They do have drugs that are helping reduce the infection, but it takes a lot of funding.

It's like asking "Well if they can do this, why aren't they curing cancer right now?"

This is a really big first step that has taken them years to be able to take to human testing. You do realize it takes about 10 years of safe practice on animals before it's allowed on humans right?

I am hoping that this will be the first step in a great number of breakthroughs. It just really all depends on where it goes from here.

[backslashbaby]

That is really, really cool! Sometimes these things scare me, though. Do we understand enough of the mechanisms behind viruses and genes? But I'd say that for the smallpox vaccine back in the day, for sure, so maybe it's all good :)

There's an online (I think entirely online) short program at Oxford University you may be interested in if you're still considering study. And one one nanobots, too, but I believe that one requires on-campus study. I can send anyone the details if you like. I was going into the computer side :) Still might some day!

[Zoombie]

Everyone is always afraid of new things, even those that create them. And...well, a bit of fear is a good thing. It keeps us from doing stupid things. But we must not go too far and stop a good thing because we're scared of the possible uses for ill.

Now, we've got a load of advances in medical and nano-technological sciences...where's our A.I advances?

Oh right, when we figure out a part of A.I, it stops being A.I and becomes its own thing, like speech recognition and lip reading and stuff.

But back on topic: If we can use this HIV thing to fix this brain thing...can we load up different genes? Like, say, genes that support healthier living?