Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Chronicle (12.14.07) - Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Sabin Russell
The discovery came about when researchers at the University of Ulm were screening molecules from semen samples in the hope of finding some that might naturally block HIV. Instead, they found protein fragments that promote HIV infection by grouping together to ferry viral particles to cell surfaces.
"This is one of the most interesting new perspectives on HIV transmission to emerge in years," said Dr. Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in San Francisco. The new findings, he said, may answer a question that has long perplexed researchers: why a virus that is weakly infectious in the laboratory can spread so efficiently through sexual contact. Scientists have found it takes 1,000 to 100,000 HIV particles to create a successful infection in the lab. But when the newly identified proteins are added, a successful infection can result from as few as three virus particles.
This knowledge, in turn, raises the possibility that blocking the molecule - dubbed Semen-Derived Enhancer of Virus Infection, or SEVI - could make it much harder for HIV to spread.
Studies now might be conducted to see how prevalent the protein is among at-risk populations, said Dr. Jay Levy, a virologist at University of California-San Francisco, and one of the first scientists to isolate HIV. For instance, semen from HIV-infected men whose partners remain uninfected despite having unprotected sex might be analyzed to see if the protein is present or is somehow blocked.
The full report, "Semen-Derived Amyloid Fibrils Drastically Enhance HIV Infection," was published in Cell (2007;131:1059- 1071).
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