Promising candidates for new HIV drugs found.Byline: ANI Washington, Oct 14 (ANI): Studying an HIV HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), either of two closely related retroviruses that invade T-helper lymphocytes and are responsible for AIDS. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is responsible for the vast majority of AIDS in the United States. protein that plays a key role in AIDS progression has helped University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is the medical school of the University of Pittsburgh, located in Pittsburgh, PA. As of 2007, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine consists of 589 medical students - 53% men and 47% women. researchers discover compounds that show promise as novel treatments for the disease. Study author Thomas E. Smithgall explained that HIV drug discovery efforts have met with little success in finding compounds that interact with an important HIV virulence factor Virulence factors are molecules produced by a pathogen that specifically influence their host's function to allow the pathogen to thrive. Factors that are used in general life processes, such as metabolism or bacterial cell structural components, may be vital to the pathogen's , called Nef, because it lacks biochemical activity that can be directly measured. To get around that problem, Smithgall's team developed an assay to measure Nef function indirectly by coupling it to another protein, called Hck, which Nef activates in HIV-infected cells. Because Hck activity can be easily measured, the researchers were able to use it as a reporter for Nef activity in an automated high-throughput screening High-throughput screening (HTS), is a method for scientific experimentation especially used in drug discovery and relevant to the fields of biology and chemistry. Purpose and method process. The researchers screened a library of 10,000 chemical compounds against the coupled proteins to see which ones influenced Nef-induced activation of Hck. After further testing, they confirmed that three compounds inhibited the activity of the Nef-Hck complex and, more importantly, all of them also interfered with HIV replication. The researchers found that one compound was so effective that it suppressed HIV replication to undetectable levels in cell culture experiments. "So we now have a way to rapidly and efficiently screen for inhibitors of Nef signaling through Hck. But the surprise was that some of those inhibitors also showed strong antiviral antiviral /an·ti·vi·ral/ (-vi´ral) destroying viruses or suppressing their replication, or an agent that so acts. an·ti·vi·ral adj. activity in cell culture models," Smithgall said. He said that there is evidence that people infected with HIV variants that have mutations in the Nef gene take substantially longer to develop disease symptoms or AIDS. In animal models, disrupting the production of Nef from the virus or its interaction with Hck also delays or prevents disease symptoms. The study was published in the early, online version of ACS Chemical Biology ACS Chemical Biology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published since 2006 by the American Chemical Society. The aim of ACS Chemical Biology is to disseminate significant original research at the interface between chemistry and biology. . (ANI) Copyright 2009 Asian News International The Asian News International (ANI) agency provides multimedia news to China and 50 bureaus in India. It covers virtually all of South Asia since its foundation and presently claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency. (ANI) - All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
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