Herpesvirus latency is really complicated, more so than HIV. It hides in more tissues and particularly in nerves, which have some degree (debated) of immune privilege. Every type has different latency. Most types have multiple, very different methods of staying latent and stay more latent than HIV. We understand some of those methods, partially understand many of them, and still don't know a lot about others. A latent infection will probably still remain if too few of these pathways are activated at once.
Maybe BigCo Evil Pharma isn't "incentivized" to cure HIV; but hundreds of universities including those outside the United States, are. The US does not hold a monopoly on medical advancement.
HIV is *hard* to cure. That's why it's not been cured yet.
w10-1•10h ago
To be clear: they deliver the HIV TAT protein which activates latent cells to transcribe HIV (ultimately possibly producing viable HIV virions).
Activating-to-kill has been pursued with other agents, but none have proven effective at depleting the reservoir. (The latent reservoir requires HIV anti-retroviral therapy to be lifelong, making one of the top three most expensive diseases in the US).
This may be more of a proof for the method, of encapsulating a fragile mRNA in a protective lipid layer, but one which will be incorporated into cells. I'd expect it to be used outside attempts to cure HIV (having consumed some HIV funding).
sirspacey•8h ago
_Microft•8h ago
What does that mean? (mRNA encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle entering cells is exactly how the COVID vaccines of BioNTech and Moderna work)
rusk•8h ago
ampdepolymerase•8h ago
A cell is a bundle of proteins wrapped in a membrane that's sort of an oil drop (or as another comment said, a fat bubble). In biology it's called a phospholipid bilayer. Fun fact you can actually "merge" cells together with the help of certain viruses. Drug delivery usually involves moving molecules though this phospholipid bilayer which involves all sorts of tricks. There are pores and receptors on the membrane that can selectively bind to different biochemical molecules and proteins. A good chunk of research in bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, quantum computing is focusing on simulating protein binding dynamics and protein-protein interactions on various levels so we can design drugs that can bind to the receptors we want. (Alphafold made this a lot easier to figure out how to go from a sequence of genetic material to a specific protein shape) A RNA vaccine is kinda like a virus in that it has to be taken into a so the cellular machinery (ribosomes) can build the protein that it codes for. So having a micelle (or nanoparticle, whatever you want to call it) that can get absorbed and merged into the cell that you are targeting specifically is a Big Deal.
bijection•8h ago