The Burrill Report


New research showing how antibodies can battle viruses inside cells could eventually prove to be of key importance in the development of next-generation antiviral drugs for treating everything from AIDS to the common cold.

Virus-killing antibodies have long been thought to work their magic outside cells, flagging invasive pathogens for destruction by immune cells or blocking viruses from entering healthy cells altogether.

However scientists at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK have up-ended that view. The team’s research shows that antibodies can actually remain attached to viruses as they enter healthy cells. Once inside, the antibodies trigger a response led by a protein called TRIM21, which tags the virus to be culled by the healthy cell’s waste-disposal system.

“Because TRIM21 neutralization occurs rapidly, before transcription of viral genes, this offers the possibility of ‘curing’ rather than killing an infected cell,” say the scientists.

Introducing additional TRIM21 protein can make the process even more efficient the study’s authors found, illustrating a potential method for improving the performance of antiviral drugs.

Improved antiviral medications employing TRIM21 could one day become an important tool for battling AIDS and other complex viruses which are rapidly developing resistance to existing drugs.

“Doctors have plenty of antibiotics to fight bacterial infections but few antiviral drugs,” says Leo James, the study’s lead author. “Although these are early days, and we don’t yet know whether all viruses are cleared by this mechanism, we are excited that our discoveries may open multiple avenues for developing new antiviral drugs.”

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


November 05, 2010
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-inside_job.html