Hi I'm Kate the simple biologist and today we're going to be talking
about something near and dear to my heart because I work on it every day in the lab - HIV
In the world today there are about 37 million people living with HIV
that's about the population of the state of California
and with all the research being done on HIV, it really makes you wonder...
Why haven't we cured of HIV yet?
Part of the reason that HIV is so hard to cure is that it can become latent
meaning that a cell infected with HIV doesn't make any virus right now but it
could at some later point. To better understand latency and the problem with curing HIV,
we need to understand three things:
1. How HIV works
2. How our current treatment works
3. Why the treatment that we have right now is not a cure
Let's start with how HIV works. HIV infects immune cells in the body
so what happens is that HIV comes, attaches to an immune cell, and inserts
its genetic information into the cell itself.
That genetic information is then inserted into the DNA of the cell that
has been infected. After that, HIV uses the cell machinery that's already in
place to make more and more virus. HIV infection is kind of like when
Voldemort took over the ministry of magic.
The ministry of magic already existed. It already had its own workers and it
already had a standing in the wizarding community
The ministry's job is usually to enforce Magical Law,
but when Voldemort gets involved, he uses that infrastructure that's already
in place to spread a message of Fear.
So if we go back to HIV - the ministry of magic is like a cell (it already has the
infrastructure), and the HIV is like Voldemort (it piggybacks on the infrastructure
and uses it to create more virus).
So now that we know how HIV works, let's move on to how our current treatment works.
Treatment is done through inhibitors, and inhibitors work kind of like blocking a
shot in basketball.
Except in this case the inhibitors block HIV. They can either block HIV while it's
being produced or block HIV from being able to infect new cells.
But while the inhibitors work really well, they don't last forever.
They're kind of like your favorite t-shirt. When you first get it, it looks
really good, but over time it gets rips, it gets tears, it gets curry from that
time that you ordered seamless,
and eventually it's time for that shirt to retire. And time for you to get a new shirt!
Just like your favorite t-shirt, the inhibitors get damaged over time.
So as long as you need to be treated, you need to continue taking the inhibitors
over and over again.
Here's where it gets tricky...
It seems like if the inhibitors work by stopping HIV in its tracks then the first
time that you take the inhibitors you should be cured, right?
Unfortunately it's not that simple, and the treatment we have right now isn't a cure.
When HIV infects a cell and inserts its genetic information into the DNA of that
cell, it then has two choices:
The first choice is to start making more virus right away and this is what
happens most of the time. The second choice is a little more sneaky...
Surprisingly that choice is to do nothing!
The inhibitors can recognize and shut down a cell that's making HIV, but they
can't recognize or know what to do with a cell that's not making HIV.
The cell that's not making any HIV right now is called latent.
The cell making HIV is called active. Although latent cells aren't making any HIV right now...
at any point they can become active and start making lots more HIV
and if you don't have the inhibitors around when that happens you can get sick all over again.
So as soon as scientists can find a way to recognize latent cells and shut them
down before they ever become active...
That's when we'll have a cure for HIV.
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See you next time!