Could A Stem Cell Breakthrough Bring About A Possible Cure For AIDS?
We have been fighting AIDS for a very long time now and without fail it seems that every year or so we hear about some new breakthrough in medicine that will give us the tools needed to help cure AIDS, and for the most part nothing comes of it.
This newest possibility could end up being just another one of those ‘breakthroughs’, or it could in fact be the real deal as Dr. Scott G. Kitchen hopes it will be.
The breakthrough in this case has to do with stem cells and their ability to created the needed cells, called cytotoxic T-lymphocytes – T-cells – that are used to recognize and kill HIV-infected cells. With AIDS the HIV prevents the body’s immune system from what are called white blood corpuscles (WBC) during an infection, which in turn causes not enough T-cells to be produced.
By using blood stem cells, and “programming” them to form the needed T-corpuscles the body can fight back against the infection.
In testing with mice, where the HIV infection mimics what happens in humans, they found after examining blood tests that were taken on the second and sixth week that the T-cells count had increased and the HIV level had decreased.
There are still human trials to be conducted but this maybe one breakthrough that is indeed just that.
via Techie-Buzz
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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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