Most Awesome Medical Breakthrough Since Penicillin

As long as our immune system doesnt become crap/useless for taking a drug for every little thing...

Im not saying its bad, medicine its always welcomed when it works well with "Minor" to none side effects.

Teared up. This is amazing, and a fucking perfect example of simple brilliance. It's all summed up in this comment:

Therefore, when one end of the DRACO binds to dsRNA, it signals the other end of the DRACO to initiate cell suicide.

Ever since I've discovered and fallen in love with microbiology I've always thought the key to curing viral infections lay in either manipulating or somehow drawing upon the immune system's natural processes. It's so neat to see that that's not only the case, but that simple logic and protein construction are the solution to so many infections. What really impressed me is that of all 15 viral strains they tested DRACOs on, it cured all 15, especially with all 15 truly representing a broad spectrum of the viral pathogen world (totally looked at the picture and went "it treats rhinoviruses AND filoviruses!?").

Wicked cool. Hope this doesn't die under the crushing weight of ignorance, bureaucracy and politics.

Wow this is fantastic news. What I'm worried about is whether or not viruses can evolve and strengthen much like bacteria has done today.

This looks awesome. Hopefully it will get through to human trials someday.

Just like in "I am Legend":

Wow this is fantastic news. What I'm worried about is whether or not viruses can evolve and strengthen much like bacteria has done today.

Yes they can, that's why we have new flu shots every year. They mutate quite fast.

Let me digest the paper first before saying anything, except that the news article's introduction is pure stupid.

Hadriel
*edit* read my later post instead */edit*

I'm allergic to penicillin. ._.

I'm allergic to penicillin. ._.

That has absolutely no bearing on the topic at hand. The discovery of penicillin still led to the alternatives you use to accomplish the same things and being allergic to penicillin has no correlation to this antiviral.

sounds AWESOME. back when i was a Bio major, I would have actually died of excitement reading about this, lol

but seriously though, sounds like the tests are going well, and I cant see any immediate problems with it(not that there isnt a team of fully trained MIT scientists who would have already caught anything I could think of)

my only question is whether or not its possible for viruses to mutate and discontinue their use of dsRNA, say they switch to regular RNA? thats probably far-fetched, but i feel like viruses are some of the most adaptive organisms(?) on the planet

sounds AWESOME. back when i was a Bio major, I would have actually died of excitement reading about this, lol

but seriously though, sounds like the tests are going well, and I cant see any immediate problems with it(not that there isnt a team of fully trained MIT scientists who would have already caught anything I could think of)

my only question is whether or not its possible for viruses to mutate and discontinue their use of dsRNA, say they switch to regular RNA? thats probably far-fetched, but i feel like viruses are some of the most adaptive organisms(?) on the planet

Assuming it was a mutation that created the different RNA for viruses, or that viruses mutated to create the "normal" RNA, it should be possible. The probability of it happening, however...

Ok finished reading the paper. Not a bad idea. Short-cutting the entire signalling pathway straight to Apaf-1 upon detection of dsRNA in the cell.

Time to pour my thoughts. They did not really address the possibility of limitations of their method (obviously they won't), which currently includes direct caspase-inhibiting viruses, SS-DNA viruses and plant viruses. Also brings up the issues of infected cells in lysogenic cycle, removal of viral titre in e.g. blood plasma during acute/sustained/prolonged infection (would take time to eliminate everything, mentioned in the paper), contraindications for certain viral infections (e.g. killing all the infected cell type could be lethal to the patient, also mentioned in the paper), and secondary effects of viral infections (e.g. viral-induced cancers like HPV leading to cervical cancer). Also critical to note: siRNA/miRNA being targetted => contraindicated for patients undergoing RNAi therapy?

I note that crossing the placental barrier is not necessarily a good thing, and neither is it a good thing to induce apoptosis to neurons/anything in the brain after crossing BBB. It also will eventually come to a point when evolution and (accidental) viral pooling will overcome DRACO through its weaknesses/limitations.

Many critical viruses tested, now to test very critical ones, namely HIV (can use Lentiviruses), HPV (not BSL3 yet I think), and all the usual big killers e.g. Hep viruses (money money~~~). These can be done using assays easily for a start. Ebola... nah... don't bother.

Good. Decent paper, although some of the captions could be better done. Very encouraging in terms of destruction of infected cells, although that itself is but one of the many strategies in fighting viral infections. Has potential.

As usual, the over-rating of such discoveries by the media, and groundless extrapolations. It's not a miracle cure until it has passed at least all of Phase II with excellent results. And remember that this just kills infected cells, but says nothing about the rehabilitation of the patient - if your body is scarred/damaged/so badly crippled by the infection... But on the bright side, it might just allow HIV patients to no longer be immuno-compromised... might.

Still, not bad that you brought this up Eos.

*edit* avoiding dsRNA? Sure. RNA-dependent-DNA-polymerase to form the template for RNA synthesis. */edit*
*edit2* Eos... check spelling of your thread title. */edit2* [Thanks]

Hadriel
(reading the paper didn't take 15 minutes... typing all these took a long time...)

./bison YES! YES!

Just gotta figure out how to properly manipulate human genetic cloning and a source of power a la Tony Stark's Arc Reactor, and we're looking at the Science Fiction Age, turned real.

Oh, and inbe4 zombie virus.

Resident Evil, anyone?

I really hope this isn't protested against.

No way to protest this, unless they try and pick on the origins of the DRACO protein (bacterially produced? EEKS! Animal-produced? ANIMAL CRUELTY!) whatever...

Hadriel

No way to protest this

Don't be silly, there's always the "We shouldn't be playing God!!112!" card

Don't be silly, there's always the "We shouldn't be playing God!!112!" card

Or the "they haven't tested long term effects for 40 years" card.

Or the "they haven't tested long term effects for 40 years" card.

40. 400. Something like that.

This reminds me of another similar breakthrough I heard of just a few days ago about a new groundbreaking treatment of leukemia with gene therapy.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Scientists_u..._id=276891

inc zombie invasion

The one thing that concerns me is, if it may shed light on curing diseases brought on by viruses does it show hope to help eradicate HIV?