Australian study points to potential cure for AIDS

David Harrich, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, said he had successfully modified a protein in HIV that the virus needed to replicate and instead made it “potently” inhibit virus growth.

“I have never seen anything like it. The modified protein works every time,” said Harrich.

“If this research continues down its strong path, and bear in mind there are many hurdles to clear, we're looking at a cure for AIDS.”

Harrich said the modified protein, which he had named Nullbasic, had shown a “remarkable” ability to arrest HIV growth in a lab environment and could have exciting implications both in curbing AIDS and treating existing HIV sufferers.

He described it as “fighting fire with fire.”

“The virus might infect a cell but it wouldn't spread,” said Harrich of his study, published in the latest edition of the journal Human Gene Therapy.

“You would still be infected with HIV, it's not a cure for the virus, but the virus would stay latent, it wouldn't wake up, so it wouldn't develop into AIDS,” he added.

“With a treatment like this, you would maintain a healthy immune system.”

A person with HIV is said to have AIDS when their count of CD4 immune system cells drops below 200 per microliter of blood or they develop what is known as an AIDS-defining illness; any one of 22 opportunistic infections or cancers related to HIV.

The majority of people infected with HIV, if left untreated, may not progress to AIDS for 10-15 years or longer, according to the U.N. Antiretroviral treatments can prolong this further still.

The new Nullbasic gene therapy, if proven, could see the deterioration from HIV to AIDS halted indefinitely, bringing an end to the deadly condition.

Harrich said the fact that a single protein could be so effective could spell an end to onerous multiple drug regimes for HIV patients, meaning better quality of life and lower costs to individuals and governments.

“In that respect, this is a world-first agent that's able to stop HIV with a single agent at multiple steps of the virus lifecycle,” Harrich told ABC Radio.

“You either have to eliminate the virus infection or alternatively you have to eliminate the disease process and that's what this could do, potentially for a very long time.”

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