Researchers find a way to make the HIV virus visible within white blood cells
25 comments
·June 6, 2025w10-1
bijection
The linked article covers this - the main innovation is neither the HIV activation treatment nor the general mRNA-wrapped-in-lipids (LNP) delivery mechanism. Instead, it's a new form of LNP which works on specific white blood cells that were hard to target before.
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.”_Microft
> 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).
What does that mean? (mRNA encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle entering cells is exactly how the COVID vaccines of BioNTech and Moderna work)
rusk
Trojan Horse
ampdepolymerase
The phospholipid micelles are non-trivial (trade secret) to make and it's the major reason why African nations and other countries have not been able to successfully create mRNA vaccines at scale.
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.
sirspacey
thank you for this, very interesting
bawolff
Interesting. I wonder if this would be applicable to other viruses that hide dormant like shingles or herpes.
hwillis
Unfortunately no, which is a real shame because herpesviruses like EBV are harmful and practically unavoidable. This research is specific to delivering mRNA to white blood cells.
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.
user____name
Another breakthrough earlier last month: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59398-7
blindriver
Pharma companies aren’t incentivized to cure HIV. Gilead found a cure for Hepatitis C but instead of being praised for it, it was derided by Wall Street because the limited financial value. I certainly hope a more honorable company will find a cure instead of a monthly treatment like Ozempic, which is a Wall Street darling because it’s expensive and monthly.
t-writescode
Human Beings are incentivized to cure HIV. Real people are experiencing real pain and problem to the tune of millions of persons a year. It is among the most stigmatized long-term illnesses on the planet.
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.
istjohn
> Prof Tomáš Hanke of the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, disputed the idea that getting RNA into white blood cells had been a significant challenge. He said the hope that all cells in the body where HIV was hiding could be reached in this way was “merely a dream”.
hackernoops
Positive development.
SoftTalker
[flagged]
user____name
Yes but there are also other incentives to consider, such as nation state interest in keeping their working age population productive instead of burdening the medical system in a period of demographic decline.
brokensegue
I don't understand this cynicism. The people who could hypothetically push this forward don't have to be the same people selling prep or other anti-virals
SoftTalker
At some point, Eli Lilly or Pfizer or Astra-Zenica or a company like them will have to mass produce and market the drug. They aren't going to kill their golden geese.
ebiester
It's game theory in our favor. The team that gets this right suddenly gets 100% of the pie and deals a blow to their competitors, at least until their competitors can find their own path. A five year monopoly on this kind of treatment would be worth more than all the PREP and HIV meds for any one company.
_ihaque
If this (or, more accurately, a drug developed downstream of this technology) worked, they absolutely would.
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
wat10000
There are plenty of cures out there for other diseases. Why were those developed, but this wouldn't be?
golemiprague
[dead]
hello_computer
> Suppose, hypothetically, you invented an actually effective weight loss drug—one that leads to permanent and healthy change.
> 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?
Here's the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60001-2
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).