[escepticos] Una enzima que destruye el HIV, se supone

[El Teleoperador]

http://ibnlive.com/news/indian-doc-develops-enzyme-that-can-destroy-hiv/48654-17.html

Copipego:

Dr Indrani Sarkar has has every reason to be excited. Her PhD thesis, 
which started in 2002 at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany, 
has thrown open the doors for developing enzymes that can destroy the 
dreaded Human Immuno-deficiency Virus or HIV within infected cells 
permanently.

Indrani and a team of scientists have developed an enzyme called Tre. 
Tre is a custom enzyme capable of detecting, recognising and destroying 
HIV, much like a pair of molecular scissors.

"In laymans terms, it's an engineered enzyme which recognises sequences 
in the HIV genome that is duplicated, integrated virus and by the 
process of recombination, it cuts out the virus from the genome," says she.

The biggest challenge with treating HIV today is that the virus becomes 
dormant and often develops resistance to HIV drugs.

The only way then to cure HIV is to get rid of the virus completely and 
Tre, the enzyme that Indrani constructed after a year and its 126 
"cycles of mutation" totally deplete HIV in the human genome in three 
months in laboratory conditions.

"It's a beautiful approach, but like any other drug, this one too will 
take a few years to reach clinics — anywhere between five and 20 years 
actually. A lot of research has to be done because since one is working 
with a novel enzyme, one has to engineer the enzyme," says she.

According to the latest statistics given out by UNAIDS and WHO, there 
are close to 39.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world and 
though it will be a while before an imminent cure is likely, Dr Indrani 
Sarkar's findings certainly hold out hope for the millions who are 
battling the disease across the globe.