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Medication reportedly causes infected cells to self-destruct, meaning the virus cannot later reactivate
Israeli scientists have developed a new drug that could constitute a breakthrough in the treatment of HIV and AIDS, Israel's Mako news site reported on Monday.
The drug, developed at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and being tested in Rehovot, was injected into test tubes containing the blood of ten HIV carriers suffering from AIDS. Within eight days, the presence of the virus in the vials decreased by up to 97 percent, according to the report.
Existing HIV medications can delay the virus's reproduction in the body, but cannot destroy it completely. Their development has helped turn AIDS into a manageable chronic disease instead of a death sentence.
The drug's active ingredient is a peptide – a smaller version of a protein – that leads to numerous copies of the virus's DNA to enter a cell instead of just one copy, which makes the cell self-destruct, the Times of Israel reported.
Abraham Loyter, one of the two scientists who developed the drug, told Mako that the medication could be groundbreaking because "in our approach we destroy the cells, so there is no chance that the virus will one day be awoken, because there are no cells, or there won't be cells that contain the virus."
http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israe...-developed-hiv-drug-may-be-major-breakthrough
Israeli scientists have developed a new drug that could constitute a breakthrough in the treatment of HIV and AIDS, Israel's Mako news site reported on Monday.
The drug, developed at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and being tested in Rehovot, was injected into test tubes containing the blood of ten HIV carriers suffering from AIDS. Within eight days, the presence of the virus in the vials decreased by up to 97 percent, according to the report.
Existing HIV medications can delay the virus's reproduction in the body, but cannot destroy it completely. Their development has helped turn AIDS into a manageable chronic disease instead of a death sentence.
The drug's active ingredient is a peptide – a smaller version of a protein – that leads to numerous copies of the virus's DNA to enter a cell instead of just one copy, which makes the cell self-destruct, the Times of Israel reported.
Abraham Loyter, one of the two scientists who developed the drug, told Mako that the medication could be groundbreaking because "in our approach we destroy the cells, so there is no chance that the virus will one day be awoken, because there are no cells, or there won't be cells that contain the virus."
http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israe...-developed-hiv-drug-may-be-major-breakthrough
