Scientists Report Creating Virus That Kills AIDS-Infected Cells

Scientists report in an article published today that they have created the first virus-killing viruses, cleverly crafted microscopic missiles that zero in on AIDS-infected cells and destroy them.

The newly created viruses target only cells that have already been captured by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, fighting infection with infection.

The approach works well in the test tube but has not been tried yet in people or even in animals, so no one knows whether it will eventually help control AIDS.

“It’s absolutely amazing that you can make a virus that will specifically target HIV-infected cells,” said Dr. Ronald Desrosiers of the New England Regional Primate Center, who plans to begin testing one virus soon on monkeys.

One version of the virus, created by Dr. John K. Rose and his research team at Yale Medical School, is a genetically altered form of vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV, which infects livestock. Another is based on the rabies virus and was created by a team led by Dr. Karl-Klaus Conzelmann of the Federal Research Center for Virus Diseases of Animals in Tubingen, Germany.

Reports on both experiments are being published in today’s issue of the journal Cell.

The experimental rabies virus cannot reproduce. However, Yale’s VSV can actually command an infected cell to make new versions of itself before killing it. These new bits of VSV can then spread to other HIV-infected cells, essentially becoming a self-manufacturing AIDS drug.

In the test tube, the reproducing VSV was able to reduce levels of HIV to almost zero for three months. This means the treatment is unlikely to wipe out HIV, even if it works, but it might be used with other medicines to keep HIV infections from progressing to AIDS.

Safety of the new approach will be one of the first questions to be answered. Other unknowns involve whether the immune system will attack cells that are infected with the genetically engineered viruses.