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Clue Found to How HIV Invades Cells
Wed Feb 23, 2:09 PM ET
Science - Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists said Wednesday they have discovered a key clue to how HIV (news - web sites) mutates to evade the immune system that could advance the search for new drugs and a vaccine.
Researchers at the Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School (news - web sites) in the United States have shown that the virus, which has infected 40 million people worldwide, alters its shape and triggers changes that allow it to enter cells.
They obtained a three-dimensional image of a protein called gp120, part of HIV's outer membrane or envelope, before it transforms and binds to so-called CD4 receptors on the cells it wants to infect.
"Knowing how gp120 changes shape is a new route to inhibiting HIV -- by using compounds that inhibit the shape change," Stephen Harrison, head of the research team, said.
Peter Kwong, of the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) in Maryland, described the research as a "technical tour de force" because scientists have sought the structure of the gp120 protein before it binds to
CD4 receptors for almost 20 years.
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