Interfering with HIV

A team of Korean and American researchers has shown in a humanized mouse model that small interfering RNA-based therapeutics could be harnessed to treat HIV.¹ However, because administering these therapeutics would require repeated i.v. dosing, the approach may only be applicable to multidrug-resistant patients. Thus, companies will need to be convinced that the approach is worth developing for this relatively small sector of the HIV market.

The study, published in Cell, was led by Sang-Kyung Lee, assistant professor at Hanyang University, and Premlata Shankar, who was an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School when the work was conducted. Shankar is now a professor of biomedical sciences at Texas Tech University...