Posted on 03/03/2009 10:54:43 AM PST by BGHater
Scientists have created a strain of the human AIDS virus able to infect and multiply in monkeys in a step toward testing future vaccines in monkeys before trying them in people, according to a new study.
This strain of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, was developed by altering a single gene in the human version to allow it to infect a type of monkey called a pig-tailed macaque, the researchers said on Monday.
The genetically engineered virus, once injected into this monkey, proliferates almost as much as it does in people, but the animal ultimately suppresses it and the virus does not make it sick, they said.
The strain is called simian-tropic HIV-1, or stHIV-1.
Researchers hope to be able to test possible new AIDS drugs and vaccines in monkeys before trying them in people.
There is a "cousin" virus to HIV called SIV, or simian immunodeficiency virus, that causes a disease similar to AIDS in certain types of monkeys.
But this monkey AIDS virus is not identical to the one that infects people and is not a perfect substitute for testing drugs and vaccines against HIV.
"If our research is taken further, we hope that one day perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we'll be able to make vaccines that are intended for use in humans and the very same product will be able to be tested in animals before human trials," Paul Bieniasz of the Rockefeller University in New York, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.
Scientists have struggled to create an AIDS vaccine.
"If you make a drug that's effective against HIV, sometimes it works against SIV and sometimes it doesn't. So that basically devalues SIV as an animal model for doing experiments involved with developing drugs," Bieniasz said.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
At last! A practical way to rid ourselves of the scourge of monkeys.
Let’s hope no one will have sex with the monkeys.
Sort of “12 Monkeys” in reverse.
Wow, from SIV, to HIV, to AIDS, and now we’ll probably get something new like SHIV - don’t get shanked!
payback?
I thought HIV originated in monkeys.....
Yeah, but how do they get all the male monkeys to fornicate with each other????
Yeah, but how do they get all the male monkeys to fornicate with each other????
And that will somehow escape the lab and we’ll have an even more deadly disease.
I did too. Maybe it was sheep.
Oh, great. This sounds like it can only end badly.
And spent millions, if not billions of dollars trying to do so. All to prevent a disease that is spread through irresponsible human behavior.
Wouldn't all this money and research be better spent trying to cure something that can't be stopped by simply wearing a condom?
So now we can’t have safe sex with monkeys.... that’s just not fair.
And now those monkeys are going to find out that payback is hell!
Now we know why when they teach kids to use condoms they use bananas.
This will be a setback for the Monkey Marriage proponents.
Why not just go to Africa and catch some of the monkeys who helped start it all?
Sounds racist to me. Have these scientists had a visit from the SS?
I’m not even going to *ask* what method these jokers used to infect the monkeys.
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