B.C. researchers have discovered a way to identify multiple strains of HIV that lay dormant in the cells of an individual.
HIV evolves continually while it is active, storing versions of itself in the DNA of infected cells that then go dormant, waiting to reactivate at some future date, like an archive of genetically unique “time bombs,” said Zabrina Brumme, director of the HIV/AIDS lab at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
Brad Jones, a Ph.D. student involved in the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Simon Fraser University study, said researchers “created a highly calibrated ‘time machine’ that gives us a specific time stamp for when each dormant HIV strain originally appeared in a person.”
That allowed scientists to construct a family tree of the virus in each patient to see how it evolved over time, right from when the virus was contracted, even decades earlier.
While the discovery is a long way from a cure, this study does give scientists a clearer idea of how challenging it will be to extricate the virus from a patient’s cells.