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London: A team of researchers in Melbourne, Australia has made a breakthrough in finding out the HIV hiding in the body, promising an effective remedy for the disease, according to The Guardian.
The major hurdle to devising a cure for the disease is the virus’s ability to hide itself inside white blood cells, making the body a ‘reservoir’ of the viruses.
Researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne have found out a ‘way’ to expose the virus.
This could lead to fully clear the virus from the body.
A paper they published in Nature Communications demonstrates that mRNA technology is helpful as it can be ‘delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding’.
The mRNA technology became popular during the Covid-19 pandemic when it was used in making vaccines.
Dr Paula Cevaal, research fellow at the Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study said that delivering mRNA to white blood cells was ‘previously thought impossible’.
The team developed a new type of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) called LNP X which the white cells would accept.
Dr Paula Cevaal hopes that ‘this new nanoparticle design could be a new pathway to an HIV cure.’
When one of the members first presented her result, the team found it hard to believe and asked her repeat the test, Cevaal said. When she returned with the results that were equally good, the team had to believe it, she said.
‘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. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, ‘wow’,’ she reportedly said.
It is reported that about 40 million people globally are living with HIV and they have to take medication daily to ‘suppress’ the virus and stop developing symptoms and transmitting it.