Biology news 1: Antibodies protect against HIV

Hi everyone,

As a biologist, I feel I need to educate people about biology and what the latest news is. We'll start with a simple discovery: that certain antibodies can protect against HIV infection. A full description is here: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050509/full/050509-2.html

What is HIV? Well, it is the virus that causes AIDS (no doubt about that). In AIDS, the cells in your body that kill the bad things (viruses, bacteria, worms) are themselves killed by the virus. So when you have AIDS you get really sick because your own internal army is destroyed and you're not strong enough to fight off other infections.

What are antibodies? Well, they are proteins (like the protein you eat) that are made inside your body, but they are shaped like a Y. The Y shape is useful because these antibodies can attach to other proteins - for example, they could latch on to a bacteria that's infected you (food poisoning), or some poison you accidentally touched (poison ivy), or in this case, a virus. When the antibodies attach to the virus, they can drag the virus away so that your body can kill it. The antibodies are like harpoons and hooks that your body can use to grab on to the viruses and destroy them.

So, it may come as no surprise that antibodies can prevent HIV from growing. But in fact it is, because for the longest time, people have had a hard time finding antibodies that work in people who have AIDS. In fact, most of the antibodies that AIDS patients have don't do anything to the virus! They just sit there floating around, maybe attaching a little, but then the virus changes and the hooks don't attach anymore.

In this study, what the scientists did was give people specific antibodies (particular Y shapes that attach to particular proteins) that would attach to HIV. They found that if you gave the patients the antibodies, the HIV didn't grow as fast as it did when you didn't give the antibodies or if you gave them random Y shapes that attach to something else.

The new study is exciting because it says that some antibodies that we could give to patients might help prevent the virus from growing inside a person. They aren't very strong, and they don't work as well as the other drugs that doctors usually give people with HIV in the US, so they will probably be part of a combined treatment, but it might be another bit of hope for people outside the US who can't get drugs very easily.

Also, the antibodies working might mean that other ways of helping a person make more antibodies might be useful in the fight against AIDS.

rani

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--Rajesh