Scientists have designed an artificial protein that can stop the HIV virus escaping from infected cells, thus preventing further spread of the virus in patient's body.
The protein was designed after researchers identified how tetherin, an antiviral protein produced by the immune system, tames HIV and other viruses by literally putting them on a leash.
"Tetherin is essentially a rod with anchors at either end that are critical for its function. One anchor gets into the virus and the other in the cell membrane to inevitably form a tether," said Paul Bieniasz of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who led the research.
The artificial protein, designed by the scientists at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University, New York, did not resemble the tetherin in its sequence at all but has a similar configuration to prevent viruses from escaping.
We designed a "completely different protein with the same configuration – a rod with lipid anchors at either end – and it worked very well", he said.
Informing that tetherin targets lipids only, Bieniasz said, since there is no specific interaction between tetherin and any viral protein, it makes it difficult for the viruses to evolve a resistance.
The report appears in the latest issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.