{"id":222356,"date":"2025-09-24T03:09:40","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/scientists-advance-prospects-for-permanently-putting-aids-virus-into-dormant-state-using-gene-therapy"},"modified":"2025-09-24T03:09:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:09:40","slug":"scientists-advance-prospects-for-permanently-putting-aids-virus-into-dormant-state-using-gene-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/scientists-advance-prospects-for-permanently-putting-aids-virus-into-dormant-state-using-gene-therapy","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Advance Prospects for Permanently Putting AIDS Virus into Dormant State Using Gene Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-advance-prospects-for-permanently-putting-aids-virus-into-dormant-state-using-gene-therapy2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a study of human immune cells infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine say a molecule within HIV itself can be manipulated and amplified to force the virus into long-term dormancy, a state in which HIV does not replicate.<\/p>\n<p>The Johns Hopkins team that conducted the new study had <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/28340355\/\">previously shown<\/a> that the molecule of interest, an \u201cantisense transcript,\u201d or AST, is produced by HIV\u2019s genetic material and is part of a molecular pathway that essentially puts the virus to sleep, a state known as viral latency.<\/p>\n<p>The study\u2019s leader, Fabio Romerio, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says the new findings add to a growing body of evidence that may help researchers develop a gene therapy that boosts AST production. A report on the research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published May 9 in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.adu8014\"><em>Science Advances<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a study of human immune cells infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine say a molecule within HIV itself can be manipulated and amplified to force the virus into long-term dormancy, a state in which HIV does not replicate. The Johns Hopkins team that conducted the new study [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}