On 1 December is World AIDS Day, which in Spain has affected and affects about 80,000 people, and that is the agent responsible for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
As treatment has not cured and have in some cases serious side effects , many scientists, also Spanish, trying to come up with preventive and therapeutic vaccine or new pills definitely less aggressive.
This is the case of the research team of Mariano Esteban, National Center for Biotechnology (National Research Council), introduced last September that the positive results of a prototype HIV vaccine "more powerful" than developed so far.
Search for new drugs
In addition to the vaccine, Spain participated in the search for drugs with fewer side effects. Last year an international team of scientists, with Spanish participation, designed a new drug can effectively block the entry of the AIDS virus in cells that infect you.
It is based on the derivative of a small protein that the body itself produces, probably to defend against other viruses. After identifying the aforementioned blood protein synthesized by introducing some modifications (VIR-576), scientists found that prevented HIV injects its own genetic content through the cell membrane.
The researchers asked the European Commission funding to continue research into new drugs and is to enter and infect the cell, HIV needs to enter the membrane through the end of one of its surface proteins, called gp41. What makes the protein (VIR-576) is attached to the end of gp41, preventing it from contacting the cell membrane.
To infect, the virus has to drive a sort of harpoon into the cell and what makes this drug is to wrap the tip of the harpoon, thereby preventing it from entering and infecting the cell.
Guillermo Gimenez, Biological Research Center, has reported that now it is looking for a compound to improve what has been discovered so far, making it "chemically smaller." This is achieved by simplifying their synthesis, to be more soluble in water, lower your costs and make it more suitable for administration in developing countries.
Today, as Gimenez, most patients are treated with a combination of three antiretroviral drugs , and they come to act within the cell, so that side effects are greater, hence the importance of this new drug.
To accelerate its improvement the researchers asked the European Commission funding in a call that is not yet resolved, confirmed Giménez.
