The US
National
Institutes of Health and Pharmaceutical company Sanofi, Engineer a "Tri-Specific Antibody" to Attack HIV Strains
Orange County, CA - Septmber 25th 2017 - In collaboration with the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi, scientists have engineered an antibody that attacks 99 percent of HIV strains and can prevent infection in primates. The antibody was engineered to attack three parts of the virus, making it harder for HIV to resist attacks.
Though promising in prevenient trials, human trials won’t begin until 2018 to see if the same results in prevention and treatment are replicable. Professor Linda-Gail Bekker, the president of the International Aids Society, told the BBC that these findings are an “exciting breakthrough.” Humans struggle to fight off HIV due to the virus’ ability to mutate its appearance often resembling something close to influenza. The immune system tries to fight against an innumerable number of besieging strains, ultimately unable to win.Researchers have recently studied HIV positive patients, whom after years of infection, began developing powerful weapons called “broadly neutralizing antibodies” that would attack fundamental properties of HIV and can kill off large swathes of strains. Since this discovery, researchers have been attempting to use broadly neutralizing antibodies as a form of HIV treatment, as well as a prevention method to the infection.
As for the antibodies’ effectiveness in the proceeding human trials only time will tell, however all previous indications point to the likely success of this progressive HIV treatment in the years to come.
