Sometimes two wrongs can make a right…
In the laboratory, the scientists took HIV and removed the parts of the virus that causes disease.
They then stripped off the virus’ outer coat and redressed it with the outer suit of another virus. By doing this, the researchers had changed the target of the virus.
HIV normally infects immune cells called T cells. The new outer coat instead directed HIV to hunt down molecules present on cancer cells, called P-glycoproteins.
The next step would be to insert a gene into the virus that would kill the cancer upon contact.
[Source: BBC News]
I always believed there was a lot of medical promise in genetics, and hopefully great scientists like these will use it to come up with ways to cure these haunting diseases and illnesses without turning people into mutants.
