HIV-Destroying enzyme discovered.

**shadowprophet** · September 18th, 2007, 00:43

Bangalore: Dr Indrani Sarkar has has every reason to be excited. Her PhD thesis, which started in 2002 at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany, has thrown open the doors for developing enzymes that can destroy the dreaded Human Immuno-deficiency Virus or HIV within infected cells permanently.

Indrani and a team of scientists have developed an enzyme called Tre. Tre is a custom enzyme capable of detecting, recognising and destroying HIV, much like a pair of molecular scissors.

"In laymans terms, it's an engineered enzyme which recognises sequences in the HIV genome that is duplicated, integrated virus and by the process of recombination, it cuts out the virus from the genome," says she.

The biggest challenge with treating HIV today is that the virus becomes dormant and often develops resistance to HIV drugs.

The only way then to cure HIV is to get rid of the virus completely and Tre, the enzyme that Indrani constructed after a year and its 126 "cycles of mutation" totally deplete HIV in the human genome in three months in laboratory conditions.

"It's a beautiful approach, but like any other drug, this one too will take a few years to reach clinics — anywhere between five and 20 years actually. A lot of research has to be done because since one is working with a novel enzyme, one has to engineer the enzyme," says she.

According to the latest statistics given out by UNAIDS and WHO, there are close to 39.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world and though it will be a while before an imminent cure is likely, Dr Indrani Sarkar's findings certainly hold out hope for the millions who are battling the disease across the globe.

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**SnesR0X** · September 18th, 2007, 01:01

THAT IS GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really hope it comes sooner than later, so many people could have their lives saved...

**kcajblue** · September 18th, 2007, 01:19

that is totally awesome.
it could save millions of people.

**alexvander** · September 18th, 2007, 01:40

they should give it to everybody in the world even people who dont have it and make everyone take it so there will be no more aids

**VampDude** · September 18th, 2007, 01:42

That's cool...

...So the idea of sending them all to Africa (the HIV/AIDS capitol of the world) and burning them (like livestock with foot and mouth) is looking to become out of question?

**splodger15** · September 18th, 2007, 08:14

Nice lets hpoe its sooner this is a great discovery

**VampDude** · September 18th, 2007, 09:12

Originally Posted by splodger15

Nice lets hpoe its sooner this is a great discovery

They should find a cure for foot and mouth before aids, they should burn all the diseased people (ALL OF THEM) instead've all the diseased animals for a change.

**Vampbri-n** · September 18th, 2007, 10:50

Well what can humanity do next................?

**splodger15** · September 18th, 2007, 11:40

Originally Posted by VampDude

They should find a cure for foot and mouth before aids, they should burn all the diseased people (ALL OF THEM) instead've all the diseased animals for a change.

Not really foot and mouth is only affected by animals at the moment but that could change. Foot and mouth got out again because they were testing with it in some lab.

If I remember correctly the first foot and mouth outbreak was from imported meat.