Forced mutations doom HIV
Fifteen years ago, MIT professor John Essigmann and colleagues from the University of Washington had a novel idea for an HIV drug. They thought if they could induce the virus to mutate uncontrollably, they could force it to weaken and eventually die out — a strategy that our immune system uses against many viruses. The researchers developed such a drug, which caused HIV to mutate at an enhanced rate, as expected. But it did not eliminate the virus from patients in a small clinical trial reported in 2011. In a new study, however, Essigmann and colleagues have determined the mechanism behind the drug’s action, which they believe could help them develop better versions that would destroy the virus more quickly. This type of drug could, they say, help combat the residual virus that remains in the T cells of patients whose disease has been brought into long-term remission by the triple-drug combination...