AIDS treatment, can it be solved in one shot?

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AIDS (AIDS) is a highly harmful infectious disease. The full medical name is "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome". Human immunodeficiency virus (referred to as HIV) invades the human body and destroys the body's immune function, resulting in the death of the infected person. a disease.

Specifically, HIV takes the most important CD4 T lymphocytes in the human immune system as the main target of attack, and destroys these cells in large quantities, causing the human body to lose its immune function. Therefore, the human body is easily infected with various diseases, and malignant tumors occur, and the mortality rate is high. The average incubation period of HIV in the human body is 8 to 9 years. During the incubation period, people can live and work for many years without any symptoms.

It is generally believed that AIDS originated in Africa and was brought to the United States by immigrants. On June 5, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a case report of 5 AIDS patients in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, which was the first official record of AIDS in the world. In 1982, the disease was named "AIDS". Before long, AIDS hit all continents.

Since the first case of AIDS was discovered, about 79.3 million people have been infected with HIV and 36.3 million people have died from AIDS-related diseases. As of 2020, a total of 37.7 million people were living with HIV. Due to the high mutation rate of the HIV genome, AIDS-related treatment has been difficult.

B cells are a type of white blood cell responsible for producing antibodies against viruses, bacteria, etc. B cells have a place in the human immune system. Based on this characteristic of B cells, researchers at Tel Aviv University have used CRISPR editing technology to genetically modify them to produce antibodies against the HIV virus.

CRISPR is a repetitive sequence in the genome of prokaryotes. It is an immune weapon produced by bacteria and viruses in the history of life evolution. CRISPR gene editing technology is precise, inexpensive, powerful, and easy to use. It is this technique that the researchers used to bring the gene encoding the antibody into B cells in the body, and to introduce the antibody exactly at the desired site in the B cell's genome.

Notably, this is the first study to engineer B cells in vivo and make them produce the desired antibodies. Based on this research, it may no longer be a dream to solve AIDS with one shot in the future.