New targets in disrupting HIV lifecycle

273 proteins have been identified to be vital components in the reproduction of the virus that causes AIDS according to a recent study lead authored by Stephen Elledge of Harvard Medical School and published online in SciencExpress.



This discovery paves the way for building insights on how the virus actually functions, and subsequently on finding a way to circumvent the HIV lifecycle.


It is known that HIV contains little genetic material of its own and that it only hijacks a host cell's genetic code to reproduce. This new study identifies some of the cell proteins the virus uses in that process.



According to Elledge, current anti-AIDS drugs generally focus on the virus itself and the problem is that HIV is a highly mutable virus, so it can change the target of the drug so that it no longer binds the drug that well. This is the reason Elledge's team focused on human proteins.


Elledge and his colleagues screened thousands of possibilities using RNA interference, a technique honored with a Nobel Prize a year ago, to find the 273 proteins that are part of the HIV life cycle. RNA interference can be used to effectively shut down one gene at a time within a cell. The researchers used RNA interference to determine any effect on HIV growth or reproduction.

This is a welcome development but the researchers warned that there are still uncertainties of creating drugs that would kill HIV using this discovery (i.e. protein inhibition). The identification of the 273 proteins is only a preliminary step to finding cure.