That was the subject of the first event of Brilliant!Science, a week long biosciences festival co-hosted by the Academy and the Gladstone Institutes. “Infectious Cures: Hijacking Viruses To Overcome Disease” was an “intimate conversation” with Dr. Leor Weinberger of the Gladstone Institutes held Thursday at the Commonwealth Club.

Moderated by the Academy’s microbiologist, Shannon Bennett, Weinberger started the conversation by giving us the background of the bad guy virus—in this case, HIV.

First he gave us the numbers—HIV has killed 30 million people, 34 million are currently living with AIDS (the disease caused by HIV), 3.4 million of those are children and 16.6 million children have been orphaned due to the disease.

The antiviral drugs used to treat those infected with HIV are good, Weinberger stressed, but don’t reach everyone who needs them. Plus, the extreme regimen of taking the drugs makes it difficult for many who do have access. Weinberger also introduced the idea of the “superspreaders”—these are small groups of people that engage in high-risk behaviors and are more likely to transmit the virus. In the case of HIV in Africa, many of these superspreaders are sex workers and truck drivers.

With antivirals or a potential vaccine—even if these treatments were able to reach a large percentage of a population—superspreaders would greatly diminish the efficacy of these treatments. Think of superspreaders as the bad guy’s evil sidekick.

After Weinberger gave us an idea of how wicked a bad guy HIV truly is, he then explained how the virus commits its crimes inside our bodies.

HIV is perfectly suited to attack our white blood cells. Its external keys target white blood cells, hijacking them and turning the white blood cells into HIV-making factories.

Weinberger, like many researchers, wants to stop HIV in its tracks. In his lab, his team is genetically engineering HIV—keeping its outer structure virtually the same. He copies the genetic material within the virus and “erases” much of the code, making a smaller version that can replicate faster. He calls this smaller version TIPS, for Therapeutic Interfering Particles.

Because TIPS is similar to HIV, it can enter the white blood cell just as easily. But since TIPS is smaller and faster it can outcompete HIV, turning that white blood cell into a TIPS-making factory instead of an evil HIV factory.

Even better, TIPS is transmitted just like HIV, meaning those evil sidekicks—the superspreaders—actually begin transmitting TIPS, instead of HIV, to the very people that need access to something that stops HIV.

Even better still, TIPS is able to evolve as HIV evolves. One challenge of viruses is that they evolve quickly, becoming resistant to vaccines (think of our yearly flu shots). But TIPS is able to keep up with HIV.

This all sounds too good to be true, right? Weinberger and team have TIPS working well in petri dishes in their lab. But as with many new solutions, it needs more testing, more funding. From bench to market is at least five years in any situation, Weinberger said. So keep your fingers-crossed.

And if it works on bad guys like HIV, why not other viruses? Stay-tuned.

In general, we have reason to be optimistic. So optimistic, in fact, that the theme for World AIDS Day is “Getting to Zero,” as outlined in, for example, the 2011-15 strategy of the United Nations Program on AIDS. In part, this means eliminating new HIV infections. As New Scientist reports today:

Sensing that HIV is finally on the run, AIDS experts have argued strongly that these preventive programs should be scaled up as rapidly as possible.

Seems like President Barack Obama is listening. He began the day by committing more funding toward the fight against AIDS. From the New York Times:

For the domestic fight, Mr. Obama announced that he was committing to seek $15 million more for the Ryan White program supporting HIV medical clinics in the United States and $35 million for state programs providing access to necessary drugs. For global efforts, he set a goal of nearly doubling to six million the number of infected people who will get antiretroviral AIDS drugs.

Earlier this week, the New York Times gave a quick summary of two new hopeful treatments.

One treatment involved a harrowingly difficult bone marrow transplant, originally given to a man suffering from both HIV and leukemia—to treat the leukemia. The treatment effectively rebuilt his immune system from the ground up! A happy side effect is that he has also been HIV-free for the past four years.

The other hope lies in gene therapy. A paper published in Nature this week demonstrates that the efforts have worked in mice. In a corresponding article, Nature News describes how southern California researchers

used a genetically altered adenovirus to infect muscle cells and deliver DNA that codes for antibodies isolated from the blood of people infected with HIV.

(To understand more about gene therapy, please watch this Science in Action.)

In both the paper and the article, researchers describe that until a vaccine is discovered, gene therapy could offer the best hope in protecting against transmission.

PLoS Medicine and PLoS ONE have a series of articles this week on male circumcision as a way to prevent the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Scientific American says that, although it could cost billions, it also could be highly affective.

Some studies are finding that it [circumcision] decreases the odds that a heterosexual man will contract HIV by 57 percent or more.

Finally, KQED Quest is always a great source for HIV-related research news. Last week, they interviewed Warner Greene of the Gladstone Institute at UCSF on their radio program about the state of the disease in the United States and globally—and raised questions about the search for a cure.

World AIDS Day has selected “Getting to Zero” as its theme for the next five years. Medical research plays only a small part in that ambitious goal, but recent advances also give reasons for optimism.

Image: CDC