Science can now Destroy All Viruses

[elfs]

A clever drug named DRACO has destroyed all viruses to which it was exposed in laboratory settings. The drug is a clever nanomechanical marvel: it recognizes cells in a unique state caused only by the presence of a virus, the manufacture of double-stranded RNA, the stuff viruses use to take over the cell's biochemistry, and releases the chemical signal for immediate cell death, causing the cell to self-destruct before the virus can begin reproduction.

DRACO is a general-purpose antiviral. It will kill every virus in the body in order to do its work. DRACO has worked well in mice, destroying all traces of a target influenza virus.

When we started mucking about with antibiotics, we discovered that there were nasty side-effects to killing every bacterium in your gut. Given that viruses are even more intimate with our biochemistry-- our cells show aeons of viri tinkering, genes inserted into us from other vectors-- I predict that killing off every virus in the body will also have particularly nasty side effects.

I would be nice if something this clever and obvious could be found to target bacteria. We need new antibiotics, and soon.

Comments

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

well, I suspect that to someone with HIV the fact that they're future offspring might not get some beneficial viraly induced mutation is not likely to be the most important consideration. I suspect that there might be other issues that might occur do to use of this substance but I truly hope that this is the next leap forward in anti-viral, a sorta of viral penicillin.

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

"…We need new antibiotics, and soon.…"
And we also need to get away from trying to make the environment we expose out kids (and incidentally ourselves) to absolutely sterile. Babies in their first few months do need to be exposed to bugs to trigger the proper and full development of their immune systems.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

I heard about this. And I, like you, was quite wary of, 'It kills every cell in your body with a viral infection!'

....

Every one? Like, if 50% of your cells have some sort of benign viral infection, what happens? Or, say, just 10% of your lung tissue? Gonna be a little rocky there for a while.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

There are known and documented beneficial bacteria species. There is no such thing as a known beneficial virus. I highly doubt there will ever be a known beneficial virus. So KILL ZEM! KILL ZEM ALL!

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

well, unless you need gene therapy. I guess you could say there aren't any naturally occurring ones.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as a known beneficial virus

Wrong.

The trouble with viruses is that, historically, we've only gone looking for them when they produce pathological symptoms of infection. The vast majority are asymptomatic, and we don't know what they do.

You might want to google on "commensal organism" and "HERV" before you pass such sweeping statements ...

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I predict that killing off every virus in the body will also have particularly nasty side effects.

Random guess: this is going to be something that has to be tested extremely carefully for use in pregnancy. The role of endosymbiotic ERVs in gestational immune tolerance isn't well-understood but it's known that in sheep, the active presence of one endogenous retrovirus family is required to prevent the maternal immune system from triggering a miscarriage -- and it's believed that in humans, ERVs are important in maintaining maternal/foetal immune system tolerance.

(Shorter version: take DRACO while pregnant, lose the pregnancy.)

[dougs.livejournal.com]

> take DRACO while pregnant, lose the pregnancy

There's a huge commercial opportunity right there.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Unlikely.

The hazards are (a) class action lawsuits from women who didn't want to lose the pregnancy, and (b) large-scale host-versus-embryo or embryo-versus-host immune reactions giving rise to a cytokine storm (read: pregnant woman dies horribly).

At a guess DRACO is going to be as strongly contraindicated in pregnancy as chemotherapy agents or thalidomide. (Unless I'm utterly mistaken and endogenous retroviruses don't produce double-stranded RNA at any stage.)

NOTE: ERVs make up 5-8% of the human genome. And we've co-opted them to do things like control gene transcription, resist exogenous retroviral infection, and control cell fusion during placental development.

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

according to the link you just posted said ERVs are single strand DNA/RNA transcribers and therefor unlikely to be effected by DRACO which only targets double stand RNA virus types.

[norman-hamer.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem with the original article - It explicitly says that it works by targeting dsRNA, but most of the virii they're claiming were eliminated are ssRNA. Reovirus was the only common dsRNA virus I could come up with on relatively lazy googling.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

But, as I read what Elf posted, DRACO doesn't target viruses, or viral DNA, or viral RNA, for that matter. It targets cells that have already been infected by a virus.

It merely uses the fact that normal human cells don't produce double-stranded RNA.

Now, this reveals an important point: since this stuff does not target viruses, but only actively infected cells, what about dormant viruses? Or viruses just "floating around" (say, in the bloodstream)? How does this fit into the picture?

And you raise a good point, norman_hamer: are there viruses that do not cause human cells to produce double-stranded RNA?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

It will have to be a last-resort Only in Hospital medicine for two reasons. One, to ensure proper dosing so there are no resistant strains of virus created. Adn two, to be able to deal with all the side effects this is bound to cause.

An interesting development though.

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

"...would be nice if something this clever and obvious could be found to target bacteria"

Google bacteriophage. There a whole tree of viruses that specifically target individual species of bacteria. They're so finely targeted, in fact, that you'd need to use a mixture of several strains to treat any particular infection, but on the plus side they can be evolved along-side the bacteria, so resistance is only a passing effect. They were a big thing before the advent of antibiotics, and then got ignored by everyone except the russians. Right now, they're beginning to make a huge comeback.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Do scientists EVER watch the Resident Evil movies? ANY movies?!?

Or if they do, are they saying, "I could improve on that..."?!?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!?!?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

No.

Because: movies. Ack, spit.

(They shitcanned the idea of science advisors in Hollywood a couple of decades ago, they were costing good money that could be better spent on SFX and stars while boringly shooting down the best entertainment as "implausible".)

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

No-no-no-no! You've got it completely backwards!

I'm not talking about science advisors for movies.

I am talking about scientists who either DON'T watch "Minority Report", "Gattica" or the "Terminator" movies and are trying to actually build it because it seems like a good idea?

Or scientists who did watch them all and are saying, "Wow, we could do that?"

And to make matters worse, far too many of the researchers in question are saying, "Oooh, well that movie robot was vulnerable to being overloaded by too much motion in the area. Let's give ours fuzzy-logic circuits that can filter out extraneous motion, as well as thermal sensors tuned to 98.6 and audio receptors that detect the sonic wavelength of human breathing!"

Mad science times ten!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Do you actually know any scientist, or any research, that actually acts like this? Or are you merely spouting the anti-science and anti-research rhetoric that is oh-so-en-vogue in the US Media?

Because all of the scientists that I personally know or have known are huge sci-fi geeks. The only thing in sci-fi that these folks ignore is the junk-science and physically-impossible nonsense.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually? I know three scientists who are currently engaged in taking science fiction and making it a reality.

One works for NASA and actually posted in this thread. Say hi to Shockwave. Actually, I think the stuff he's working on for NASA is pretty established already, but ask him about his homebrew stuff.

The other person I know works for the Office of Naval Weapons Research. He makes things go *boom*. He makes things go boom from around corners, as in bullets that can follow you, ala Tom Selleck's "Runaway".

The third person was told by person #2, that they are messing with dangerous stuff that will garner them a visit from various 3-letter agencies if they keep working on it.

And yes, all three are: Trekkies/Firefly/Star Wars/Battlestar/Girl Genius fanatics, all three are furries, and the guy from NWR who makes bullets turn corners is a fursuiter. So if you want to get into comparing the size of our geekiness, I want dinner and a movie, first.

No, I'm not anti-science, I'm just saying that some things really DON'T need to be made. I'm sorry, there is just no good use for a robot that can autonomously hunt down human beings. However, I am a firm believer in developing all manner of technology that would defeat those very same autonomous robots? Let the other guy waste money and resources on making them, while we make sure we can counter them.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

My apologies. I had heard an anti-research/anti-science screed on NPR the morning that I posted my earlier reply.

During my 7 years in grad-school, I knew plenty of people doing research that would seem useless to the average person, research that had to be "jazzed up" on the grant proposals. All of my fellow grad-students and most of the professors were all sci-fi geeks, too. I never heard of anyone doing research into the sort of Mad Science that you describe above. Actually, they all took the "moral lessons" from their favorite sci-fi to heart.

One n^th-year in my department (where 'n' was a very large number approaching infinity) was very concerned about "knee-jerk", quick-fix attempts to 'undo' global warming." Specifically, he felt that geoengineering attempts are ill-advised, at best, and was concerned about overreaction to the problem.

Not trying to be Geekier-Than-Thou here. ^_^ I just never knew anyone like this. So, the idea that any Computer Scientist researching AI wouldn't care about Asimov's 3 Laws is just completely outside of my experience.