Scientists have succeeded in evolving a new strategy to starve the HIV to death by blocking its nutrient and sugar pipeline. HIV is known to have a voracious sweet tooth and that turns out to be its Achilles’ heel according to research scientists from the Northwestern Medicine and Vanderbilt University. Once the virus invades an activated immune cell, it has a significant craving for nutrients and sugar from the cell in order to replicate and fuel its growth throughout the human body.
Scientists have now discovered the switch that turns on the abundant nutrient and sugar pipeline in the cell. This resulted in blocking the switch with the help of an experimental compound and closing down the pipeline thereby starving HIV to death. As a result, the virus could not replicate in human cells in vitro.
The present discovery may also find application in the treatment of cancer since cancer too has an intense appetite for nutrients and sugar in the cell for is growth and spreading.
Harry Taylor, assistant professor in Medicine-Infectious Diseases stated that this compound can be a precursor for something that could become useful in the future as a cocktail component in the treatment of HIV to improve the effectiveness of medicines we now have.
A CD4+ T cell is essential for HIV to grow and this type of immune cell should also be active which means it is already responding to pathogens in the blood. Activation enhances the supply of critical nutrients and sugar necessary for the cell as well as the virus to grow.
Till now, no one was aware of the first step that triggered a newly activated T-cell to stock up nutrients and sugar. The nutrients are the building blocks of genetic material the virus and the cell need to grow.
Northwestern and Vanderbilt scientists have now figured out that the first step in stocking up the pantry of the T-cells involved switching on a cell component known as phospholipase D1 or PLD1.
Armed with this knowledge, the scientists used an experimental compound to block PLD1 and close down the pipeline. It is believed that this is the first time ever that scientists have focused on the ability of the virus to pilfer the pantry of the cell for its own growth. The compound was also found to help slow down the proliferation of the abnormally activated immune cells, according to the study.
At present, the HIV medications only stop the growth of HIV but do not impact the abnormal and excessive growth and activation of immune cells triggered by the HIV.
Taylor added that this new approach would perhaps slow the growth of immune cells and reduce the dangerous inflammation thwarting the lifelong persistence of HIV.
