Researchers say they've taken a major step toward finding a cure for HIV.
As The Guardian reports, scientists at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne found a way to make the HIV virus visible, potentially laying the groundwork for ways to banish it from the body altogether.
As detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the team developed a way to send messenger RNA into cells, to root out the hiding virus by fully enveloping it in a bubble of formulated fat called lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). The genetic molecules then instruct the cells to make the virus visible.
Author and Doherty Institute research fellow Paula Cevaal told the Guardian that it was "previously thought impossible" to deliver mRNA into HIV-containing white blood cells. But thanks to a new type of LNPs, dubbed LNP X, the team found a way for these cells to accept the mRNA.
"Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design could be a new pathway to an HIV cure," she added.
The human immunodeficiency virus attacks the human body's immune system and can lead to deadly AIDS if left untreated. Despite decades of research, there's still no effective cure for the disease; though a handful of patients have been fully cured of HIV, the treatments remain brutally complex and expensive.
While the number of people in the United States living with HIV has decreased since 2018, over 39,000 new patients were diagnosed in 2023.
The latest research came with such surprising findings that the team didn't believe it at first.
"We were overwhelmed by how [much of a] night and day difference it was — from not working before, and then all of a sudden it was working. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, 'wow,'" Cevaal told the Guardian.
While it's a promising step in the right direction, scientists still have to figure out whether making the hidden virus visible will cause the body's immune system to deal with it. Other possibilities include developing new ways to combine their findings with other gene therapies to ultimately cure HIV.
Before the latest technique can be used in humans, it would also have to be put through its paces, from animal experiments to human safety trials, a process that could easily take many years.
And Cevaal appears to be realistic about those chances.
"In the field of biomedicine, many things eventually don’t make it into the clinic — that is the unfortunate truth; I don’t want to paint a prettier picture than what is the reality," she told the Guardian. "But in terms of specifically the field of HIV cure, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing, in terms of how well we are able to reveal this virus."
"So from that point of view, we’re very hopeful that we are also able to see this type of response in an animal, and that we could eventually do this in humans," she added.
Beyond HIV, the researchers are hoping their LNP-based mRNA delivery method could be applied to other diseases as well, including certain types of cancer.
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