Bone marrow stem cells to destroy circulating HIV: a hypothetical therapeutic strategy

Umesh Chandra Halder

doi:10.1186/s40709-018-0075-5

Abstract

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) still poses enigmatic threats to human life. This virus has mastered in bypassing anti retroviral therapy leading to patients’ death. Circulating viruses are phenomenal for the disease outcome. This hypothesis proposes a therapeutic strategy utilizing receptor-integrated hematopoietic, erythroid and red blood cells. Here, HIV specific receptors trap circulating viruses that enter erythrocyte cytoplasm and form inactive integration complex. This model depicts easy, effective removal of circulating HIV without any adverse effect.

Highlights

Having around 36 years of understanding after its discovery [1], scientists are still haunting a full and effective cure for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its outcome acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
Once circulating HIVs bind with the receptor and co-receptor associated complex on the receptor-integrated red blood corpuscles (riRBC) membrane by its envelop glycoproteins gp 120 and gp 41, viral membrane will readily fuse with cell membrane leading to partial core shell uncoating and entry into riRBC cytoplasm [4, 6]. This event would immediately facilitate reverse transcription of genomic HIVRNA to yield pre-integration complex (PIC) [4, 6, 11, 61]. Up to this event HIV follows its normal path of infection but once PIC has been formed inside riRBC cytoplasm, due to the lack of nucleus it will be unable to complete its replication and life cycle and eventually will stall
As a stem cell will proliferate in the bone marrow for a long period of time to produce numerous riRBC naturally without forming lymphoid lineages of cells, (iii) both the receptor integrated burst forming unit-erythroid (riBFU-E) and riRBC cells will not elicit any immune reaction as the cells are immunologically non-reactive taken from healthy O−/− person and (iv) the HIV trapping riRBCs will remain effective for Combination therapy riBFU-E + riRBC

Summary

Introduction

Having around 36 years of understanding after its discovery [1], scientists are still haunting a full and effective cure for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its outcome acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Apart from having diverse side-effects, ART has certain limitations too, as it only delays patients’ death but does not cure AIDS and it only targets replicating HIVs and not the latent viral particles.

Results

Conclusion