HIV-fighting cells can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

摘要

Just when all seems lost, our hero strikes back with such speed that the invader is vanquished. It sounds like the climax to a movie, but if this is how a few people are able to fight off HIV unaided, it could provide a route to a blockbuster drug. A tiny proportion of people with HIV manage, without drugs, to keep the virus from replicating uncontrollably. We already knew that the immune T-cells of these "elite controllers" react more strongly to HIV than T-cells of other people, but we didn't know why, says Xu Yu at the Ragon Institute in Boston. Yu's team compared the behaviour of another part of the immune system, dendritic cells - which "teach" the immune system to destroy infected cells - taken from elite controllers, HIV-negative people, people with HIV receiving drugs, and those not on medication.