All modern drugs only transfer the disease from the active phase to the chronic one. A new medicine can completely cure a person.
Life is full of paradoxes. The cure for the disease of the century, which 1.5 million patients are waiting for in our country alone, is being created jointly by Russian and American scientists. And this despite the cold snap in relations between Russia and the United States! The project began 3 years ago at the initiative of the US National Institute of Health and the Federal Research Center "Fundamentals of Biotechnology" RAS (Federal Research Center for Biotechnology RAS) with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. But in such a short time, scientists managed not only to design and obtain a miraculous substance, but also to experimentally demonstrate its ability to destroy HIV in its "lair" - neurons. Vadim Makarov told about the progress of work on the creation of weapons to combat the virus, which has already claimed the lives of tens of millions of people., Doctor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Biomedical Chemistry, Federal Research Center of Biotechnology RAS.
Aggressive newbie
Vadim Albertovich, HIV was discovered at the end of the last century. Why was the medicine so difficult to create? How was this virus different from others?
- From the point of view of biology, this virus is very similar to many others. Its only fatal difference from other viruses is the defeat of the human immune system, which is why the body cannot fight it on its own.
Is this some kind of aggressive newbie?
- There are newcomers and more aggressive. If we take the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus, then a person can live with it for only a few days. It's just that the Ebola virus hasn't spread that much. The progress that has been made over the past 10 years in the fight against HIV has been significant. Patients infected with this virus can now live long enough - tens of years, since a large number of active drugs have appeared that can transfer the disease from the acute phase to the chronic one. But the problem is that even a very powerful antiviral therapy cannot completely remove the virus from the body. It simply drives the virus into a kind of "depot" from where it is impossible to extract it. Such “depots” for HIV viruses are nerve cells - neurons. By the way, this picture is very similar to the herpes virus. Almost all people have it, some have it,and for someone it can "sit out" in neurons for years and wait in the wings. So, our joint team for the first time has created a substance that will be able to destroy the HIV virus in the entire body, including neurons. Not just transfer the disease into a chronic form, but completely cure a person!
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Mice are worth their weight in gold
Have you already reached clinical trials?
- Before clinical - no, but we are already successfully treating laboratory mice.
Why do we and the Americans need each other in this project?
- First, because dealing with the HIV virus requires astronomical financial resources. Neither side wanted to bear the brunt of potential financial losses, since there is a great risk that we will work hard, but in the end we will not be able to create a drug of a fundamentally new generation. Secondly, this is an extremely difficult job, it was impossible to do it only in Russia, we have neither adequate animal models nor biological technologies for conducting tests. For example, for experiments on animals, you need to use insanely expensive mice, which are only in the United States. At the same time, the Russian school of chemistry is the world's leading school in the field of fine chemical synthesis. We were leaders 100 years ago, and I hope we will remain so in the future. That is why our scientists were attracted to participate in the joint project.
Why do we need insanely expensive mice? Couldn't you find a cheaper one?
- And these are special mice - humanized. With the help of modern technologies, they have created an immune system that is identical to the human one, we can say that it is just a human immune system. Such mice are a very convenient laboratory object, you can test a drug and understand how it will affect a person.
How were the areas of responsibility shared with the Americans?
- As I said, the Russian side is responsible for the chemical component, design and synthesis of compounds. American colleagues are engaged in the biological part and computer modeling. It looked like this: first, we discussed ideas with our American partners, then their specialists on supercomputers checked how realistic our assumptions were. Thus, a certain list of promising compounds was formed. The synthesis of these compounds is carried out here in Moscow, at the Federal Research Center of Biotechnology RAS. And ultimately the finished compound is tested in the USA.
Distance from laboratory to pharmacy 10 years
When can a finished medicine appear in pharmacies?
- There is a very long distance from the laboratory to the pharmacy. If all goes well, it will take at least 10 years. Faster is impossible. This is due to a certain sequence of experiments and the required amount of data that needs to be accumulated. And partly with the fact that humanity itself has created a huge number of barriers to the emergence of new drugs. It is very difficult and very expensive to get approval from all regulatory authorities. And this is not only here, it is the practice of all countries of the world. In addition, in a year our joint project ends and it will be necessary to seek funding for practical work. Many pharmaceutical companies and funds do not seek to enter into such long and expensive projects, which is why today our research is funded by state funds from both Russia and the United States. The development of a drug to combat HIV is rather a task of the state.
- At one time, the story of the so-called "Berlin patient" - Timothy Brown, made a lot of noise, he is considered the first person who was cured of HIV. He was transplanted with stem cells from a donor who is immune to HIV. Can this method of treatment be massive?
- I am very wary of statements that someone has recovered from something on a single example. We do not know for certain whether he was cured or not, these are not clinical trials that are done according to a very strict protocol and which can be trusted. The virus can hide in neurons and wake up when a long time has passed. In our work, we adhere to the position of evidence-based medicine, when there are blind clinical trials on a large sample. As for stem cells, this is an ambiguous question. Of course, there are examples when stem cells work successfully, but this does not apply to the HIV virus. Therefore, we proceed from traditional approaches: on the one hand, there is a virus, on the other hand, it is necessary to find a substance with which this virus can be destroyed.
And where did HIV come from? There are a variety of theories, according to one version of the virus is a side effect of the development of biological weapons …
- The origin of the virus is not my area of expertise, my responsibility is to develop a substance that can kill the virus. In fact, there is only one serious scientific version of the origin of HIV. The virus appeared in the process of mutation in Africa. First, it arose in great apes, then it was transferred to humans. All other versions: cosmic, divine, conspiracy theories, have no relation to common sense and are not considered by the scientific community. And this is not the last case of the appearance of previously unknown fatal infections. We believe that new viruses will appear as a person develops, and we will come up with substances to destroy them. It is an endless, ongoing process.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV
