Commentary Cellscience Reviews Vol 4 No 2 ISSN 1742-8130

Host-oriented therapeutics: a new treatment against HIV-1/AIDS?

The high mutation rate of HIV-1 during viral replication and the ineradicable nature of HIV infection have constrained the development of an efficacious vaccine. The compromised effectiveness of current anti-retroviral treatment has led to calls for innovative therapeutics to successfully control this disease. Increasingly, new findings on the interaction of host factors with the virus, such as those recently published by Fellay et al in Science, have shed new light upon the pathogenesis of AIDS, raising the possibility of developing powerful new tools in the treatment of this modern epidemic. One potential new approach would be to develop drugs targeted against host cell gene products that are essential to the productive life cycle of the virus, although not to the host cell itself. It is difficult for the HIV virus to develop resistance against cellular functions that are required for viral production. Thus we are presented with the prospect of a broad spectrum of potential endogenous anti-viral targets that may be directed against both wild-type and mutated drug resistant HIV-1 strains.

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