Sheffield Medical Technologies Inc. other research news

Researchers from INSERM (Marseille, France) reported in AIDS Science on the isolation and characterization of the binding site of a non-mutating cellular protein, beta-2-microglobulin (ß2m), found on the surface of replicated HIV.

ß2m, found on the surface of all mammalian cells, is incorporated into the viral envelope of replicated HIV as the virus buds from the infected T cell. When the virus leaves the cell, it exposes a formerly hidden epitope of ß2m, thus presenting a different peptide structure than is seen on normal cells. ...