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Jun. 9th, 2005 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingHow to treat Cystic Fibrosis: "Well, combining Ebola and HIV seems promising!"
Regulators in the US could soon be asked to approve a human trial of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis that uses a hybrid of the HIV and Ebola viruses.
Tests on monkeys show the hybrid virus delivers genes to the lungs far more efficiently than any other method developed so far. And while the idea of combining two killer viruses sounds horrifying, the risks should be low.
Kobinger now plans a more extensive monkey trial to convince the US Food and Drug Administration that human trials will be safe. The hybrid virus is created by adding HIV RNA, a stripped-down version of the Ebola surface protein RNA and the therapeutic gene to cells. The hybrid virus then self-assembles. Crucially, only the therapeutic gene is incorporated into the hybrid virus, so it cannot replicate.
All attempts in the lab to force such viruses to regain the ability to replicate have failed. Even if this did happen in the body, the resulting virus would resemble HIV, as the hybrid contains no Ebola genes - and HIV cannot infect lung cells. If it did get into the blood, where normal HIV thrives, such a virus would not replicate as efficiently as wild-type HIV. While the patient might suffer, the virus could never reach high enough levels in the body to infect others, Ray Pickles, a gene therapy researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says.
The biggest risk is that if a patient becomes infected with wild-type HIV, the wild-type virus and the hybrid could somehow merge, but such recombination has never been observed in HIV.
Regulators in the US could soon be asked to approve a human trial of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis that uses a hybrid of the HIV and Ebola viruses.
Tests on monkeys show the hybrid virus delivers genes to the lungs far more efficiently than any other method developed so far. And while the idea of combining two killer viruses sounds horrifying, the risks should be low.
Kobinger now plans a more extensive monkey trial to convince the US Food and Drug Administration that human trials will be safe. The hybrid virus is created by adding HIV RNA, a stripped-down version of the Ebola surface protein RNA and the therapeutic gene to cells. The hybrid virus then self-assembles. Crucially, only the therapeutic gene is incorporated into the hybrid virus, so it cannot replicate.
All attempts in the lab to force such viruses to regain the ability to replicate have failed. Even if this did happen in the body, the resulting virus would resemble HIV, as the hybrid contains no Ebola genes - and HIV cannot infect lung cells. If it did get into the blood, where normal HIV thrives, such a virus would not replicate as efficiently as wild-type HIV. While the patient might suffer, the virus could never reach high enough levels in the body to infect others, Ray Pickles, a gene therapy researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says.
The biggest risk is that if a patient becomes infected with wild-type HIV, the wild-type virus and the hybrid could somehow merge, but such recombination has never been observed in HIV.