WIKIMEDIA, C. GOLDSMITHLike other retroviruses, the genetic material of HIV wedges itself into the genome of its human host. While antiretroviral therapies are effective at repressing HIV, they don’t eliminate the integrated virus, which can lie low in a latent state and reactivate if the treatment is stopped. In a study published today (July 21) in PNAS, researchers take advantage of the snipping precision of a genome-editing technique to cut HIV out of the human genome.
“They looked at it in several different systems,” said Daniel Stone, a staff scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. “It’s really convincing that the approach has promise. The next question is, how do you deliver this?”
The researchers, led by Kamel Khalili at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, used the CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing system to excise HIV from several human cell lines, including microglia and T cells. They targeted both the 5’ and 3’ ends of the virus, called the long terminal repeats (LTRs), so that the entire viral genome was removed.
“We were extremely happy with the outcome,” Khalili told The Scientist. “It was a little bit . . . mind-boggling how this system really can identify a single copy ...
