Study finds HIV protein can drive immune ...( rogrammed to attack HIV. The re...),Health

The researchers then used immunized mice to look at the effects of the viral protein in vivo. One day after the mice were injected with an antigen to which they had been previously immunized, they received an additional injection of either low- or high-dose recombinant gp120 protein or saline as a control. For up to 24 hours afterwards, mice receiving the high-dose gp120 were found to have a significantly lower immune response to the antigen injection than either control mice or those that had received the low-dose gp120.

This is the first report of fugetaxis caused by a viral gene product and could be an important way that HIV keeps the immune system at bay, Poznansky says. We dont know yet if this process occurs in patients infected with HIV, but if it does, it provides a new therapeutic approach that could block this viral protein activity and allow immune cells to do their job.

Brainard and Poznansky add that this mechanism could also be used by other viruses including the pox viruses, papilloma viruses and herpes viruses that remain in the body after initial infection and have proteins known to influence cellular movement. Poznansky is an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Additional co-authors are William Tharp, Elva Granado, Nicholas Miller, Alicja Trocha and Bruce Walker, MD, of MGH/PARC; Xiang-Hui Ren, MD, and Ernest Terwilliger, PhD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Brian Conrad, University of Michigan; and Richard Wyatt, Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The work was supported by grants from the U.S. Public Health Service and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.