Featured news from NHIVNA
HIV-related news from NAM
HIV damages B-cells as well as T-cells: new treatment targets identified
Gus Cairns, 2011-06-10 10:50:00
The signature effect of HIV infection, and the cause of AIDS, is disruption of the T-lymphocyte branch of the immune system and in particular the destruction of CD4+ T-helper cells.
A team of researchers at the US National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has now found that HIV also causes a very specific form of damage to the other half of the adaptive immune system, the B-cells, and in particular the memory B-cells, which recognise previously-experienced infections and generate antibodies against them.
By using probes to delete specific genes within B-cells, they discovered that HIV infection creates an unusual population of exhausted, non-responsive cells called tissue-like B-memory cells. In previous experiments with cells taken from HIV-negative people, they found that that these cells are characterised the activation of genes which cause the cell to produce proteins that inhibit the cell’s function and that two of these inhibitory proteins had an especially strong effect on B-cell function.
Now, in cells taken from people with HIV, they have found that, by deleting the genes that manufactured these inhibitory proteins, they could restore the anti-HIV activity of these B-cells, at least in the test tube, that this rejuvenated activity was long-lasting, and that the cells exhibited a number of other markers of increased immune activity.
Although the gene-therapy techniques used in these experiments were sophisticated and can cause unpredictable immune reactions in themselves, the inhibitory proteins thus identified could become new therapeutic targets.
Source:1
