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Modified blood stem cells could eradicate HIV
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Modified blood stem cells could help create a fairly large number of T-lymphocytes that could be excellent at recognizing and destroying immune cells infected with HIV.
Researchers from the California Institute in Los Angeles (United States) have developed another method of combating the AIDS virus: it is necessary to set stem cells on HIV. Work in this direction began a couple of years ago, when the same group discovered a special receptor in T-killer cells, with the help of which these lymphocytes have every chance of recognizing and destroying other immune cells that have already been affected by the immunodeficiency virus.
In other words, our immune system has a weapon to fight its disease; the problem is that it is not a very powerful weapon. There are too few T-lymphocytes that can recognize cells with the virus to completely eradicate HIV.
Then the researchers took a roundabout route. They took a DNA sequence encoding the HIV-recognizing receptor and inserted it into human blood stem cells. After that, these cells were transplanted into human thymus tissue, which, in addition, was implanted into mice (rodents do not suffer from AIDS, so it was necessary to create an artificial system with a hybrid mouse). As the researchers inform us in the web journal PLoS Pathogens, the transplanted modified stem cells produced a large number of mature T-killers with an HIV-recognizing receptor. When mice were infected with the virus, the T-killers found and destroyed the virus with infected cells wherever possible. Several weeks after the introduction of antiviral stem cells, the level of infected lymphocytes significantly decreased, and healthy ones increased, which indicated the combat successes of the resulting T-killers.
The results are very encouraging, but they have one weak point, and the researchers themselves point it out. To create human AIDS in a rodent, they had to significantly alter the mouse's immune system. As a result, HIV in such a biological system may be more vulnerable: for example, it may not mutate as intensively - and multiple mutational variability is precisely its main weapon.
In short, the prospects of this method of treatment can only be judged after experiments conducted in more natural conditions. Probably, as scientists say, in order to enhance the antiviral properties of T cells, it will be necessary to introduce several types of virus-recognizing receptors into stem precursors.
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