Dr. Bruce Walker, an immunologist at Harvard University, first heard the upcoming pandemic whisper while teaching MIT undergraduates in South Africa a course on HIV. One of his students, who recently returned from a visiting family in Wuhan, China, described the situation in horrific detail.
When the student broadcast, she “received a text message from her parents that something really dramatic was happening,” Walker recalled to Salon.
At the same time, one of his student phones began to explode. It was owned by Diana Brenard, then Senior Vice President of Emerging Pathogens at a pharmaceutical company. Gilead, And one of Walker’s guests on the course. She was on the phone from an expert RemdesivirSee if it works against this new type of pneumonia, which seems to be caused by the new coronavirus.
These were Walker’s first hints that Walker’s life was about to change radically. And while the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t caused by the HIV virus, Walker knew that his research could be very helpful. A year and a half later, it turned out that he was right. The COVID-19 vaccine, among other new coronavirus treatments, owes a great deal of debt to long-standing HIV research.
The diversity of HIV research in its larger application to medicine is not widely known. Still, there is much virological research that results from decades of intense efforts to unravel the mystery of the human immunodeficiency virus. This is an effort that spans many different subfields within medicine. Therefore, decades of fighting HIV have provided many insights into the fight against other illnesses and the creation of cures for other conditions.
In the early days of COVID-19, the first step in defeating the virus was to find its weaknesses. Again, previous HIV studies have helped. In contrast, SARS said researchers “deeply understood why HIV is a difficult vaccine to make,” according to Dr. Michael Farzan, chair of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute. -CoV-2 is an “easy-to-make vaccine”.
“Both viruses use a very similar type of protein that you’ve seen many times,” Farzan told Salon. “Both SARS-CoV-2 and HIV have glycoproteins that they use to invade cells, which are the main targets of these vaccines. These two viruses, and influenza, SARS- There are also some very clear differences that make CoV-2 but do not make HIV vulnerable to the vaccines currently in use. “
In the case of his own research, Farzan was able to help identify important functions related to ACE2 receptor For SARS-CoV-1 or SARS, As the virus is known. The ACE2 receptor is a specific protein that allows the coronavirus to infect human cells. They are also present in SARS-CoV-2, or the new coronavirus.
“The unique property is that it binds to the receptor, not the receptor,” Farzan explained. “In the case of SARS, it folds independently, is exposed, and stands out. In the case of HIV, the part that binds to the receptor is like being embedded in a canyon that is inaccessible to the antibody.”
The fight against HIV also helped scientists development mRNA vaccineUsed by companies like Pfizer and Moderna Create an effective inoculation for COVID-19. These vaccines use synthetic RNA molecules to train cells to produce proteins similar to the pathogens they inoculate (the disease-causing microorganisms). This is in contrast to traditional vaccine platforms that use weakened or dead samples or parts of the pathogen itself.
As Farzan told Salon, these vaccines are “one of the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic and the way it was promoted.”
Want more health and science stories in your inbox?Subscribe to Salon’s Weekly Newsletter Vulgar scientist..
It also helped decades of virological research to combat AIDS leave the government with a readily reusable vaccine to develop a drug against COVID-19.
Dr. William Hasertin, a biologist renowned for combating the HIV / AIDS epidemic and chairman and president of Access Health International, a global health think tank, said: HIV vaccine. “In addition, national and international vaccine clinical trial networks have been established and are in operation, all of which were important for the rapid development, testing and analysis of the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines.”
Since an international network has already been created by HIV researchers, scientists can also test these vaccines on thousands of people at an alarming rate. Similarly, authorities have found a system in place to expedite approval of new drug development programs. This is all because HIV researchers have claimed that the state has the ability to act swiftly in the event of a sudden mass attack by a serious human or natural illness.
There is a long history of research into disease research that helps scientists in unexpected ways prior to the emergence of HIV.
“Just as cancer research has facilitated a rapid understanding of HIV, HIV has facilitated the rapid progress of COVID-19 and the discovery of cures for COVID-19,” Haseltine told Salon. As he explained, Richard Nixon made a fateful decision as president to fund an anti-cancer program investigating the possibility of a virus-induced illness. Years of research have ultimately helped scientists understand how to treat victims of HIV, the virus behind the AIDS epidemic. Just as we were able to draw a direct line between the anti-cancer programs of the 1970s and the anti-AIDS researchers of the 1980s, many of those scientists also have the SARS-CoV-, commonly known as “SARS”. Proceeded to fight one. “When the virus hit the world in 2003.
Inevitably, many of those same experts were asked to study SARS-CoV-2, a new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in 2020.
“The result was a very rapid advance,” Haseltine explained. In particular, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President’s Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden, has spent much of his career researching HIV.
If the main lesson is the fact that the fight against COVID-19 was fought with the weapons developed in the fight against HIV, when, where, how new illnesses occur, or earlier The study is unpredictable. May be used to fight it. Efforts against these threats will not stop even if we do not pay attention to them. Therefore, in the case of HIV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses, fighting one provided a weapon in fighting the other. ..
“By working hard to make a nearly impossible vaccine, we have developed incredible tools and insights that enable a rapid COVID-19 vaccine,” Farzan emailed the salon. Told. Immunity because SARS-CoV-2 focuses on efficient infection, reflecting that the HIV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses “cannot make any further difference in vulnerability to vaccines” He added that he was vulnerable to the response. -1 specializes in handkerling in the face of intense immune attacks and knows the immune system better than we do. “
With more funding and research, it is quite possible that the day will come when HIV will no longer be true, just as SARS-CoV-2 will become less and less true.
