🏳️‍🌈✝️ Researchers Discover How HIV Hijacks Protein On Immune Cells to Infect Them

The discovery could open the door for new treatments.

July 18, 2017


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HIV manipulates a protein on the surface of immune cells to aid its infection of those cells. Researchers who recently discovered this process believe their finding may lead to new treatments for the virus.

Publishing their findings in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) studied cultures of human cells and tissues to examine a key mechanism HIV uses for binding to cells it ultimately infects.

To begin the process of infecting a cell, HIV first binds to molecules on the cellular surface with the goal of fusing its viral membrane with the cell’s membrane so the virus can inject its genetic material into the cell.

The NIH researchers found that this process activates a cellular protein known as TMEM16F that passes the molecule phosphatidylserine from within the cell membrane to the outer surface of the membrane. The scientists believe that molecules on HIV’s membrane then bind with the newly emerged phosphatidylserine, creating a stronger bond between the viral and cellular membranes.

The researchers tested two ways of inhibiting this binding effect:

 1) blocking phosphatidylserine from emerging on the surface of the cell; and 

 2) attaching another molecule to phosphatidylserine to prevent it from binding to HIV. Both methods, each of which could be used as the basis of a new HIV treatment, prevented the virus from infecting the cell.

To read a press release about the study, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.

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