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Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

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Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#31

Post by aphyr »

bhickey wrote: post #28
aphyr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Am Not An Immunologist, but antibodies are usually produced by plasma cells, after their predecessor B cells are triggered with the appropriate antigens, right? I'm pretty sure that mechanism and its memory is acquired, not innate. In other words, it's not coded for by DNA, and you can't inherit that immunity from the father. Some maternal antibodies are heritable, but I think that's through shared blood.

For 'Not An Immunologist' you seem to have a pretty good handle on this stuff. You're mostly right about the heritability stuff, but it's a bit more subtle than that. Antibodies are built from heavy and light chains, which are in turn produced by a combinatorial recombination process: subunits get spliced together. While paternal B cells aren't going anywhere with regards to heritability, the heavy/light chain subuni…

Are any antibodies entirely genetically determined--"off the rack", so to speak? One would think that having an innate immune response to extraordinarily dangerous yet infrequently-mutating pathogens (polio, for example) would be worthwhile.

Haha, maybe I should get go get an immunology text. I think I'm pushing the limits of Wikipedia.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#32

Post by earl »

sliverstorm wrote: post #20
hugh3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, on one hand, the antibody would have been created whether or not we'd been spending all this money on research. On the other hand, the antibody would never have been noticed if we hadn't been spending all this money on research.

> On the other hand, the antibody would never have been noticed if we hadn't been spending all this money on research. Indeed. But, even though he is a homosexual man, the gene would likely be passed along eventually, and run its course through the human race (if we believe Darwin). We just don't want to wait that long. note: it would be passed one of a few ways: 1) his ancestors also had the gene, and he's not the o…

I don't think the gene arose in 40 years. Obviously it didn't, since the man is more than 40 years old. Instead, I think it's a gene that arose via happenstance and is suddenly much more useful.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#33

Post by bhickey »

aphyr wrote: post #31
bhickey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 'Not An Immunologist' you seem to have a pretty good handle on this stuff. You're mostly right about the heritability stuff, but it's a bit more subtle than that. Antibodies are built from heavy and light chains, which are in turn produced by a combinatorial recombination process: subunits get spliced together. While paternal B cells aren't going anywhere with regards to heritability, the heavy/light chain subuni…

Are any antibodies entirely genetically determined--"off the rack", so to speak? One would think that having an innate immune response to extraordinarily dangerous yet infrequently-mutating pathogens (polio, for example) would be worthwhile. Haha, maybe I should get go get an immunology text. I think I'm pushing the limits of Wikipedia.

Immunobiology by Janeway has come highly recommended to me. I still need to pick up a copy.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#34

Post by Natsu »

bradleyland wrote: post #3

What happens if we manage to kill 91% of the HIV strains? Won't the remaining 9% of the strains continue to spread and mutate? Then we're back to square one.

Yeah, that's why the usual solution is to cobble together a bunch of different 90% solutions until you have something pretty close to a 100% solution. Scientists are going through something similar with fighting wheat rust (which you've probably never heard of, but it'll be an important problem if it gets out of control).

The problem with HIV is that every obvious way of attacking it seems to have some kind of drawback that's less than obvious. You can sit around and think up all kinds of hypothetical scenarios for attacking it and find that people have already tried that. And failed.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#35

Post by [deleted] »

uptown wrote: post #23
profitoftruth85 wrote: post #19

I remember reading in "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell how STDs like HIV can be effectively stopped before they become epidemics. If this antibody can be administered and eliminate a large chunk of people with weaker strains of HIV, then assuming the stronger strains of HIV are in the same geographic area, a strong campaign of eliminating HIV spreading behavior in those areas could really reduce the spread of…

"a strong campaign of eliminating HIV spreading behavior in those areas could really reduce the spread of the disease." That's a LOT easier said than done. There's a widely held belief in parts of the world (such as Africa) that having sex with a virgin cleanses one of AIDS. Because of this, child-rape is extremely prevalent in that part of the world. I suppose you could make the case that education is the easier par…

[deleted]

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#36

Post by BahUnfair »

hazzen wrote: post #8
bradleyland wrote: post #3

What happens if we manage to kill 91% of the HIV strains? Won't the remaining 9% of the strains continue to spread and mutate? Then we're back to square one.

Likewise, 91% of the strains is not necessarily the same as 91% of the people currently living with HIV. Can anyone provide details on what, exactly, this finding does? Do we need to kill 100% of the HIV strains to have a cure? Is there one strain that is the "dangerous" one, and it isn't covered in the 91% number? Will the virus simply mutate new strains?

I'd assume it means 91% of strains of HIV. It means that the odds that someone has a vulnerable strain is greatly increased and thus you can heal more people.

HIV has a few limits, firstly (I think) it only infects one type of cell (CD4 immune cells - white blood cells), secondly, it doesn't spread as easy as influenza, you need to exchange some bodily fluids with someone, preferably with an abundant supply of CD4 cells to infect. Since it generally requires sex to get HIV, if you knock out 91% of strains the other strains wont rush in to fill the vacuum.

The resistant strains already present will almost certainly increases as a proportion of the HIV population, its just natural selection. Use of condoms can prevent people from getting the resistant strains. Interestingly, male circumcision is also an excellent way to reduce chances of HIV infection because there will be less CD4 cells in your penis.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#38

Post by carbocation »

aphyr wrote: post #31
bhickey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 'Not An Immunologist' you seem to have a pretty good handle on this stuff. You're mostly right about the heritability stuff, but it's a bit more subtle than that. Antibodies are built from heavy and light chains, which are in turn produced by a combinatorial recombination process: subunits get spliced together. While paternal B cells aren't going anywhere with regards to heritability, the heavy/light chain subuni…

Are any antibodies entirely genetically determined--"off the rack", so to speak? One would think that having an innate immune response to extraordinarily dangerous yet infrequently-mutating pathogens (polio, for example) would be worthwhile. Haha, maybe I should get go get an immunology text. I think I'm pushing the limits of Wikipedia.

You are partially on the right track. There is an innate response to pathogens exhibiting particular molecular profiles. But this innate recognition is not by antibodies, which are part of the adaptive response.

To my knowledge, there is not a repertoire of antibodies that are automatically produced, per se.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#39

Post by FiReaNG3L »

aphyr wrote: post #24
sliverstorm wrote: post #4

It's really a testament to nature and Darwin's theories that after all the time, effort and money we've been spending on AIDS research, the most successful antibody so far was not created by man, but by his DNA.

I Am Not An Immunologist, but antibodies are usually produced by plasma cells, after their predecessor B cells are triggered with the appropriate antigens, right? I'm pretty sure that mechanism and its memory is acquired, not innate. In other words, it's not coded for by DNA, and you can't inherit that immunity from the father. Some maternal antibodies are heritable, but I think that's through shared blood.

It is coded for by DNA - the DNA in each B cell rearrange itself to produce different antibodies, and you can get the sequence from that DNA.

Re: Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains

#40

Post by albertcardona »

sliverstorm wrote: post #9
bradleyland wrote: post #3

What happens if we manage to kill 91% of the HIV strains? Won't the remaining 9% of the strains continue to spread and mutate? Then we're back to square one.

There's rarely an antibody that kills every possible strain of a disease, illustrated by the fact that there is not an antibody that kills every disease . 91% of HIV strains means we are 91% of the way to complete eradication. Plus, one of the big problems thus far have been we had NO IDEA how to attack the HIV bodies. Perhaps developing an understanding of this antibody will allow us to gain new understanding, and p…

91% of HIV strains means we are 91% of the way to complete eradication.

That is inaccurate. Current antiviral agents remove most (as in over 90%) of the HIV viral particles from the blood of a patient. But then after weeks or months the viral load in blood is just as high. And any given patient has numerous strains within. Furthermore, most viral particles are not active: the virus saturates the immune system with defective particles (in a way it screens itself under noise). What's worse, HIV has long-term repositories like nervous system cells, from which particles are emitted at low rate. Killing your brain cells just to get rid of HIV defeats the purpose.

What this novel antibody will do is to remove 91% of the strains, meaning the remaining 9% will flourish enormously . RNA viruses mutate very fast and broadly (always being one step before crash-error).

What a good antibody can do is cut short the epidemics side of HIV: if a patient's HIV load is so low that it can't effectively and consistently pass on its infection to another person, the infection dies with the patient. This leads to a negative feedback loop that stops the epidemic. It's the same concept as vaccines: ensure that a sufficiently large proportion of the population is immune, so infections cannot spread when they inevitably appear in isolated individuals.

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