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