AIDS breakthrough at Vic hospital

Under the microscope: The HIV 1 virus burgeons on a lymphocyte. Photo: AFP Source: AFP

MELBOURNE researchers have made a breakthrough in the search for an AIDS cure.

A team from The Alfred hospital have uncovered HIV's genetic hiding place and found a drug able to wake it up so that it can be destroyed.

The results will be presented to the world's leading HIV experts in the US today.

The Alfred's director of infectious diseases, Prof Sharon Lewin, said waking up the killer virus with doses of a highly toxic cancer drug was a huge step in curing a disease that has already claimed an estimated 30 million lives.

"What we thought would happen happened: the virus woke up, and we could measure it," Prof Lewin said. "That is a big step.

"There are more possibilities of getting rid of it by making it visible to drugs and visible to the immune system (and) that we now know we can do.

"Now the big challenge is working out, once it is visible, what are the ways to get rid of that infected cell."

Traditional antiviral medications have been able to stop the virus infecting cells, giving patients a greater life expectancy.

But the virus remained "sleeping" in their DNA, unable to be found or treated, so patients had to take expensive medication daily to suppress its effects.

"It jumps in, buries itself into the DNA and sits there lurking. At any time, if the cell becomes active, the virus then becomes active," Prof Lewin said.

"It is like having the embers of a fire sitting there . . . the minute you take away the anti-HIV drugs, the embers relight the fire and the whole thing gets going again."

But by using cancer drug, Vorinostat, for two weeks, Prof Lewin had been able to turn on sleeping HIV-infected cells so they could be detected.

Researchers at The Alfred were able to bring the virus to notice in 18 of 20 HIV patients in a trial that concluded in January.

Prof Lewin hopes a new generation of drugs able to kick-start the immune system may now be able to kill the virus.

Prof Lewin and her team -- which included collaboration with Monash University, the Burnet Institute, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS -- will soon publish their full results.

For David Menadue, who has lived with HIV for almost 30 years, the results bring a new hope.

"Just having the existence of HIV in your body does do damage to your body every day. It puts pressure on your organs, your heart, your kidney, your liver.

"People with HIV would just love to get rid of this and go back to a normalised life. We are never really going to be able to get on top of the virus in developing countries without some sort of magical cure."

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