Zapping HIV with Chemo and Hoping for a Cure

Apparently, it’s not cool at the moment to be hopeful about finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, and it seems even the vaccine hype of recent years is mellowing.  Well, I want to share with you the fact that I am hopeful.  An exciting discovery just a couple weeks ago has renewed my faith that we will beat HIV.  A recent study found that people who are successfully managing HIV with antiretroviral therapy (ART) may be able to destroy the HIV lying dormant in their cells, by targeting these cells with chemotherapy.  It’s not that I’m allowing myself to get too excited about this particular possibility – don’t want to count our chickens before they hatch and all that.  But to me as an observer (rather than a researcher), this new area for exploration came completely out of the blue, and it reminds me that there are a million-and-one different angles and directions from which to approach finding a cure.  As long as we have the ability and the means to be creative in research, to explore and learn more about this still mysterious virus, we simply cannot guess what all the possibilities are for conquering HIV/AIDS.

You may snicker and mutter something under your breath about my youthful optimism.  You were once young and idealistic too, but now you’ve grown older and wiser, right?  Well actually, this generation of young people don’t feel optimistic about much, and I inherited a good deal of cynicism from the Martin side of my family.  So, it must be something other than sheer optimism or naivety that makes me believe we will find a cure for HIV.  Maybe it’s my faith in science and discovery.  I remind myself that one hundred years ago, my great grandparents would not have imagined the possibility of oral contraceptives, space travel, or even the worldwide web.

We have learned a lot about HIV, but there is still much to discover.  Antiretroviral drugs target and interrupt different stages in the replication cycle of the virus, stopping it from producing more copies of itself.  When you are successfully managing HIV using ART, the amount of HIV in your body is so low that it might be considered undetectable, but this doesn’t mean you don’t have HIV anymore.  It’s still there, hiding out inside your cells and ready to be reactivated if your meds stop working or you stop taking them.  But what if these cells containing the dormant virus could be targetted and zapped with chemotherapy, like we would cancerous cells?  There would be no more virus to come back.  This approach to eliminating HIV in the body would only work in people who are successfully managing the virus using ART, but according to the study authors, that’s the vast majority of people who are receiving ART in Canada.  According to one headline, “Targeted Chemotherapy Has Potential to Kill [the] Disease ‘Forever’”.

While this study reminds me of the limitless potential of humanity for research and discovery, I’m also aware of some very human barriers that might stand in the way of innovation and discovery in HIV and health sciences in general.  We have to struggle not only to fund this research in a profit-driven world, but also to bring down the barriers of stigma and ignorance that prevent it from being prioritized.  These are big hurdles, but if we surpass them, I do believe there are many different possible cures for HIV/AIDS just waiting to be discovered.

-Miriam

This was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Body Health, HIV Treatment, News . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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