A drug to cure HIV and AIDS that has been developed by Israeli researchers from Hebrew University in Jerusalem is currently being tested at the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, in central Israel.
The drug was inserted into test tubes containing the blood of ten AIDS patients currently being treated at the hospital, and was found to decrease the HIV virus count in the blood samples by as much as 97% in just eight days, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Monday.
The active ingredient in the drug is a peptide, or a smaller version of a protein, that was developed by Abraham Loyter and Assaf Friedler at Hebrew University. The peptide causes several copies of the virus’s DNA to enter the infected cell, instead of just one copy, causing the cell to self-destruct.
HIV is currently treated with a cocktail of drugs that slow the progression of the infection in the body but never rid the patient of the virus entirely. These drugs have allowed doctors to treat AIDS as a chronic illness as opposed to a fatal one.
Mr Loyter told Channel 2: “With our approach we are destroying the cells, so there is no chance that the virus will awaken one day, because there are no cells, there will be no cells that contain the virus”.
He explained that “the drug enhances certain processes in the body during the spreading of the virus and that enhancement kills certain cells”.
