Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV

Lots of things kill HIV. Bleach kills HIV. Soap kills HIV. Air kills HIV. So what. The trick is delivery or implementing a barrier. This is an interesting solution via a popular barrier for a particular problem (1 person with HIV but they still want to transmit fluids), but ultimately not sufficient to stop the spread.

Re: Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV

#6

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

This is pretty cool. I can't find Dr. Hood's paper on scholar.google.com yet so its hard to know exactly what is going on, but the mechanism sounds plausible.

Re: Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV

#7

Post by waterlesscloud » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

The article sort of breezes right by the sentence saying it can also work against tumor cells.

Also, at the end- "This work was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations"

Re: Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV

#8

Post by sageikosa » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 6:11 PM UTC

The basic mechanics of this just read awesomely. Viruses generally "attack" cells by having protein sheathes with molecular "hooks" that latch onto cell wall receptors to disrupt the membrane and deliver the viral payload into the inner workings of the cell.

This technique uses a similar mechanism (molecular latching structures) that are scaled and aligned to fit into the viruses outer sheathes themselves, then disrupt the virus structure between host cells (DNA/RNA doesn't last long without protection). It's like fighting viruses with virus-like binding mechanisms, except the attack vector isn't self replicating.