Five years? I'm sure there are plenty of cancer patients who would be willing to volunteer to try it now for a chance at having a normal life span.
I'm so sorry but, I suspect there are many loved ones out here that should not have to line up behind those in the aids line. I suspect there are many good descent loved ones that could start a line of their own. AND GUESS WHAT THEY EARNED THE OPPORTUNITY
Now folks don't give me a lesson on aids. Trust me I don't need it and I heard all the crap and balogna from the left liberal gay community.
Ohhhhh. Should make it easy to drugify.
This is, of course, only in vitro, where a number of things seem to work that end up killing the patient in vivo. But it is very promising. That it is a mechanism for apoptosis as well as gene suppression is even more exciting - there are a number of apoptosis-activators currently in clinical trials but I don't know of any that sound this promising. Oncology isn't a magazine known for hype or journalistic hysteria, either.
For those who care, the reason AIDS patients are in this is that they are a conveniently immune-suppressed population that is willing to act as human guinea pigs. I don't care how they got that way, I'm just glad they're volunteering. That is always the most difficult hurdle for treatments involving gross somatic effects, getting something approximating the human organism to act as a disease model for toxicity studies and projected dosages. Unless I'm missing something pretty big this is not a cure for AIDS, it's a potential cure for tumor cancers.
Oncogene? Maybe a great journal, but first time I've ever heard of it.
RNA silencing is a eukaryotic genome defence system that involves processing of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) into 21-26 nt, short interfering RNA (siRNA). The siRNA mediates suppression of genes corresponding to the dsRNA through targeted RNA degradation. In some plant systems there are additional silencing processes, involving systemic spread of silencing and RNA-directed methylation/transcriptional suppression of homologous genomic DNA.So, once again, we have an example of the benefits of molecular biology's exploitation of nature.
--EMBO J 2002 Sep 2;21(17):4671-4679
Two classes of short interfering RNA in RNA silencing.
Hamilton A, Voinnet O, Chappell L, Baulcombe D.
Selective silencing of mammalian gene expression has recently been achieved using short interfering RNA (siRNA). Synthetic siRNA targets homologous mRNA for degradation and the process is highly efficient. Here we demonstrate siRNA silencing of pathogenic viral gene expression. As a well characterized model we chose cervical carcinoma cells positive for human papillomavirus type 16. Over 90% of human cervical cancers are positive for papillomavirus and abnormal cell proliferation is driven by co-operative effects of viral E6 and E7 genes. We sought to silence HPV E6 and E7 gene expression using siRNAs to target the respective viral mRNAs. Our results indicate selective degradation of E6 and E7 mRNAs. Silencing was sustained for at least 4 days following a single dose of siRNA. E6 silencing induced accumulation of cellular p53 protein, transactivation of the cell cycle control p21 gene and reduced cell growth. In contrast, E7 silencing induced apoptotic cell death. HPV-negative cells appeared unaffected by the anti-viral siRNAs. Thus we demonstrate for the first time (i) that siRNA can induce selective silencing of exogenous viral genes in mammalian cells, and (ii) that the process of siRNA interference does not interfere with the recovery of cellular regulatory systems previously inhibited by viral gene expression.
wHY WAIT SO LONG. aND WHY START TESTS ON aids PATIENTS??? Sheesh, Cancer should have been cured years ago if not for billions of dollars being diverted to save Magic Johnson's et al life.