Closest animal model to study human HIV

New York, March 3: Researchers have moved a step closer to developing a vaccine for HIVdefine. They have created a human HIV strain that can infect and multiply in monkeys.

A team from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, led by Paul D. Bieniasz of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC), genetically altered human HIVdefine virus to form simian-tropic HIV-1, or stHIV-1. The mutated human virus thus created could infect a species of rhesus monkeys.

No other form of human HIV, except stHIV-1 can infect other animal species. Scientists had tried to create many altered forms of human AIDS virus earlier, but none of them could replicate the virus in monkeys or other primates.

HIV-1 has enabled the researchers to create an animal model which is closest to humans in contracting and replicating human AIDS virus.

Bieniasz said, “In practical terms, it would be very useful to have an animal model where you infect the animals with HIV, and the animals then recapitulate what happens in HIV-infected humans.”

Monkeys who were injected with mutated HIV virus showed symptoms similar to those found in infected humans at early stage.

Bieniasz and his team tested the combination of three antiviral drugs, used as a daily pill on the monkeys, and it successfully receded the infection in them.

Researchers are hopeful after testing new drugs on genetically engineered monkeys, as the drugs are likely to show close results in humans too.

“If our research is taken further, we hope that one day perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we'll be able to make vaccines that are intended for use in humans and the very same product will be able to be tested in animals before human trials,” says Bieniasz.

The study findings are published in the March 2 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.