Scientists Seek New Strategy That Will Starve HIV

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Researchers studying the human immunodeficiency virus, otherwise known as HIV, have discovered a new strategy to starve the virus by blocking the pipeline that provides the sugar and nutrients it needs to survive.

According to researchers from both Northwestern Medicine and Vanderbilt University, HIV has a crazy sweet tooth and it turns out that this voracious appetite for sweets is its Achilles' heel.

When the virus invades an activated immune cell, it consumes sugar and nutrients from the cell in order to replicate and fuel its growth throughout the body.  Scientists have now discovered the switch that turns on an immune cell's abundant sugar and nutrient pipeline that HIV uses to fuel its growth.  Researchers then blocked this switch using an experimental compound effectively shutting down the pipeline.  By closing the pipes, researchers essentially starved the HIV virus to death leaving it unable to replicate in human cells in vitro.

Researchers believe that this discover could one day not only help people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but also could be used as a treatment for a variety of cancers.  Many cancers also have an large appetite for sugar and other nutrients in the body which it needs to grow and spread.

"This compound can be the precursor for something that can be used in the future as part of a cocktail to treat HIV that improves on the effective medicines we have today," says Harry Taylor, assistant professor in Medicine-Infectious Diseases. HIV needs to grow in a type of immune cell (CD4+ T-cell).

HIV must grow a type of immune cell (CD4+ T-cell) that is active, meaning one that is already responding to pathogens in the blood.  This activation increases the cells sugar and other nutrients that are needed for both cell and virus growth.  Until now, no one knew the first step that signaled the T-cell to stock up on sugar and other nutrients. 

Scientists from both Northwestern and Vanderbilt discovered that the first step in stocking a cell's supply involved turnin on a cell component called phospholipase D1 (PLD1).  They then used an experimental compound to block PLD1 essentially shutting off the supply of sugar and other nutrients that the cell and the virus need.  Not only did this stop growth of the cells food supply, but it also slowed the proliferation of the abnormally active immune cells.

Current medications stop the growth of HIV but do not affect the abnormally excessive activation of immune cells triggered by HIV.  These excess immune cells are believed to contribute to the life-long persistence of the disease that often causes premature organ damage in HIV patients.

"Perhaps this new approach, which slows the growth of the immune cells, could reduce the dangerous inflammation and thwart the life-long persistence of HIV," Taylor says.