HIV Cure Could Emerge From COVID-19 mRNA Breakthrough
Researchers in Australia use COVID-era mRNA technology to expose hidden HIV in white blood cells, offering hope for a future cure.
New research employing mRNA technology — which gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic — may offer the key to developing a cure for HIV.
One of the chief challenges in combating HIV is the virus’s ability to hide within certain white blood cells, creating a “reservoir” that can reactivate and evade both the immune system and antiretroviral drugs.
But researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, believe they have found a way to make the virus visible and therefore easier to fight, reports The Guardian.
In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers were able to demonstrate that mRNA, or “messenger RNA” — the single-stranded molecule that carries instructions for cells to make proteins — can be delivered into white blood cells where the virus is hiding by encasing the mRNA in a tiny, specifically-formulated fat bubble.
Once the cell accepts the fat particle, the mRNA inside instructs it to expose the virus. Once visible, researchers hope the virus can be targeted and ultimately eradicated from the body.
The mRNA technology has existed for decades, but entered the public spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was used to develop coronavirus vaccines.
Dr. Paula Cevaal, a research fellow at the Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study, told The Guardian it was “previously thought impossible” to deliver mRNA to the type of white blood cells that serve as HIV reservoirs since those cells typically don’t absorb the fat bubbles — or lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) — used to carry it.
But Cevaal noted that researchers at the Doherty Institute have developed a new type of LNP — known as LNP X — that the cells will accept.
“Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design could be a new pathway to an HIV cure,” she said.
Cevaal said that when a colleague first presented the results of the LNP X experiments, they seemed too good to be true — so the team had her repeat them. She returned with nearly identical, and overwhelmingly positive, results. The experiments have since been repeated many more times.
“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,” she said. “And all of us were just sitting gasping like, ‘wow.'”
Additional research is needed to determine exactly how the virus should be targeted once exposed — whether the immune system can eliminate it on its own or requires help from a specific drug regimen.
The study, conducted using cells donated by HIV patients, will require years — possibly decades — of testing, beginning with animal trials and then safety trials in humans, before researchers can assess the efficacy of the mRNA technology.
Dr. Jonathan Stoye, a retrovirologist and emeritus scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the study, said the Doherty Institute’s lab work appears, at first glance, to mark a major advance in the fight against HIV.
“Ultimately, one big unknown remains,” he said. “Do you need to eliminate the entire reservoir for success or just the major part? If just 10 percent of the latent reservoir survives will that be sufficient to seed new infection? Only time will tell.”
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