To be clear: they deliver the HIV TAT protein which activates latent cells to transcribe HIV (ultimately possibly producing viable HIV virions).
Activating-to-kill has been pursued with other agents, but none have proven effective at depleting the reservoir. (The latent reservoir requires HIV anti-retroviral therapy to be lifelong, making one of the top three most expensive diseases in the US).
This may be more of a proof for the method, of encapsulating a fragile mRNA in a protective lipid layer, but one which will be incorporated into cells. I'd expect it to be used outside attempts to cure HIV (having consumed some HIV funding).
It was “previously thought impossible” to deliver mRNA to the type of white
blood cell that is home to HIV, said Dr Paula Cevaal, research fellow at the
Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study, because those cells did
not take up the fat bubbles, or lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), used to carry it.
The team have developed a new type of LNP that those cells will accept, known
as LNP X. She said: “Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design could be a
new pathway to an HIV cure.”What does that mean? (mRNA encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle entering cells is exactly how the COVID vaccines of BioNTech and Moderna work)
A cell is a bundle of proteins wrapped in a membrane that's sort of an oil drop (or as another comment said, a fat bubble). In biology it's called a phospholipid bilayer. Fun fact you can actually "merge" cells together with the help of certain viruses. Drug delivery usually involves moving molecules though this phospholipid bilayer which involves all sorts of tricks. There are pores and receptors on the membrane that can selectively bind to different biochemical molecules and proteins. A good chunk of research in bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, quantum computing is focusing on simulating protein binding dynamics and protein-protein interactions on various levels so we can design drugs that can bind to the receptors we want. (Alphafold made this a lot easier to figure out how to go from a sequence of genetic material to a specific protein shape) A RNA vaccine is kinda like a virus in that it has to be taken into a so the cellular machinery (ribosomes) can build the protein that it codes for. So having a micelle (or nanoparticle, whatever you want to call it) that can get absorbed and merged into the cell that you are targeting specifically is a Big Deal.
Maybe BigCo Evil Pharma isn't "incentivized" to cure HIV; but hundreds of universities including those outside the United States, are. The US does not hold a monopoly on medical advancement.
HIV is *hard* to cure. That's why it's not been cured yet.
Herpesvirus latency is really complicated, more so than HIV. It hides in more tissues and particularly in nerves, which have some degree (debated) of immune privilege. Every type has different latency. Most types have multiple, very different methods of staying latent and stay more latent than HIV. We understand some of those methods, partially understand many of them, and still don't know a lot about others. A latent infection will probably still remain if too few of these pathways are activated at once.
Also: companies do not think like a person thinks. Insolation from consequences, diffuse responsibility, and other mechanisms come into play here.
A great example of this in relatively recent history is the treatment of hepatitis C. The treatments pre-circa-2011 were pretty crappy: interferon/ribavirin had poor cure rates and bad side effects. But it was still better than hepatitis destroying your liver, so people dealt with it.
Then, in 2011, as the culmination of years of trials, telaprevir (from Vertex/J&J) [1] and boceprevir (Schering-Plough/Merck) [2] were approved and were DRAMATICALLY BETTER than interferon/ribavirin.
...and then just two years later both of these drugs got nuked by the approval of sofosbuvir (aka Sovaldi, from Pharmasset/Gilead) [3], which has _cure_ rates in excess of 90%. Telaprevir and boceprevir were pulled from the market because there was simply no more market for them once sofosbuvir hit. Scientific competition at its finest.
There is absolutely a dark side to pharmaceutical pricing and licensing, but please don't let the existence of that dark side cloud your vision of the transformative impact that those of us in biotech R&D want to have (and in many cases, have had). I was at Vertex when the early trial data on telaprevir started coming out and it became clear that we might be able to offer patients real hope who did not have it before.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telaprevir [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boceprevir [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofosbuvir
> Let’s say it’s a drug that both decreases leptin resistance and prevents simple carbs from triggering the brain’s reward centers. And suppose it doesn’t require someone to keep taking it for the rest of their life, as long as they don’t fall back into obesity.
> Now, imagine you’re not interested in getting rich—you legitimately want to solve the obesity epidemic.
> But then you realize the weight loss industry is a multi-billion-dollar machine, not to mention the pharmaceutical companies profiting off obesity-related health issues. They’re not just going to let this drug come out without a fight.
> Suppose you don’t even care that you're likely to end up falsely accused of rape by women you've never met, and probably dead soon after, with a “suicide note” conveniently found next to your body. You just want to find the best way to get this drug out there and available to the public.
> Assume, for the moment, that no one but you and a small group of trusted researchers know about this discovery—and you stumbled across it accidentally while researching something else.
> What would be the best approach to make this drug available to the public, knowing that powerful, interested parties would do everything in their power to suppress it?