PARIS, July 15 (AFP) - Scientists in Britain and the United States say they have found a unique gene in humans that defends the body from AIDS virus, a discovery that could open up a new front to fight the disease.
The gene, called CEM15, is able to halt infection by the human immunodeficiency virus, but is usually switched off by a small HIV protein called Vif, they report in a lab study.
When Vif was stripped out of the virus, CEM15 disrupted HIV's replication, rendering any new virus particles non-infectious, they say.
The study, published online Sunday by the British medical journal Nature, was led by Michael Malim, a professor at King's College London, and Ann Sheehy and others at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
"These are very significant findings and could open the door to new treatments for HIV/AIDS in the future," King's College quoted Malim as saying.
"(...) If we can find a way to block the action of Vif, it would allow CEM to work properly and prevent HIV from spreading."
Around 40 million people around the world have HIV, according to the UN agency UNAIDS. AIDS, the fatal destruction of the immune system caused by HIV, has already claimed 20 million lives in little more than two decades.
Malim cautioned that a lot remained to be learnt about Vif, but it stood a chance of becoming a new treatment to fighting HIV in the next 10 years.
"If we can find a way to block the action of Vif, it would allow CEM15 to work properly and prevent HIV from spreading," he said.
Previous studies have already suggested that Vif apparently plays an important role in the replication cycle.
HIV docks onto an immune cell, causing their two surface membranes to fuse.
The virus then spews genetic material into the host cell -- a package that includes its own blueprint in ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is a viral form of DNA, and several proteins.
With this small toolkit, the virus is able to hijack the cell's entire biochemical machinery, turning it into a factory to crank out new viruses, Malim said.
These new viruses then go on to infect other cells, replicating in turn.
Current treatments to HIV target different parts in the virus' lifecycle.
None is a cure, and there are worrying signs that some are meeting resistance from mutated forms of the virus.
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