Scientists discover the function of a mysterious HIV component

Researchers reveal new insights into the how the matrix layer of HIV-1 becomes mature

05-Mar-2025 - Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have discovered the mechanism behind an important step in the life cycle of HIV. Working together with teams at Heidelberg and Yale Universities, they found that the enigmatic “spacer peptide 2”, one of the virus components, plays a key ...

HI viruses crack the lock to the cell nucleus

For the first time, researchers have observed how HIV penetrates the nuclear pores to the genome of human immune cells

24-Jan-2025 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics and the University of Heidelberg have discovered how Hi viruses enter the nucleus of a human cell. The conical protein capsules in which the genetic material of the pathogens is packed accumulate at nuclear pores in human immune cells such as ...

A Viral Close-Up of a Distinct Virus Related to HIV

“We were expecting a difference from other viruses, but the extent of it completely blew us away”

26-Sep-2024 - Almost everyone knows about HIV. Fewer people know about its relative, HTLV-1. However, HTLV-1 can cause serious illnesses, including cancer. To develop ways to combat this virus, understanding its structure is essential. Martin Obr and Florian Schur from the Institute of Science and Technology ...

HIV cured at Charité: the next Berlin patient

Team from Charité succeeds again in apparently fully eliminating HIV from a patient’s body

22-Jul-2024 - He went down in medical history: the “Berlin Patient,” the first person in the world to be cured of HIV, following a stem cell transplant at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Now, a team from Charité has repeated this extremely rare medical achievement. The second Berlin patient has had no ...

Drug candidate may ‘unmask’ latent HIV-infected cells, mark them for destruction

The discovery reveals a potential path to eliminate the viral reservoir that cannot be cleared with existing antiretroviral drug

21-Mar-2024 - University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists have identified drug candidates that show promise to reverse the ability of HIV to escape detection by the immune system. The discovery, described in Cell Chemical Biology, reveals a potential path to eliminate the viral reservoir that cannot ...

How HIV smuggles its genetic material into the cell nucleus

New discovery might one day be exploited for better AIDS therapies

30-Jan-2024 - Around one million individuals worldwide become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, each year. To replicate and spread the infection, the virus must smuggle its genetic material into the cell nucleus and integrate it into a chromosome. Research teams led by Dirk Görlich at the Max ...

How antibodies offer protection against an infection with HIV

Team of researchers can explain how HIV antibodies work

16-Oct-2023 - How do antibodies prevent an infection with HIV? This is a question that a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Klaus Überla from the Institute of Clinical and Molecular Virology at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen and Dr. Christiane Stahl-Hennig from the German Primate Center in Göttingen can now ...

Researchers Find New Pathway for HIV Invasion of Cell Nucleus

17-Aug-2023 - A study has identified a new pathway that human immune deficiency virus (HIV) uses to enter the nucleus of a healthy cell, where it can then replicate and go on to invade other cells. The researchers also identified three proteins that are needed for the virus to carry out the invasion and have ...

The folding is the key: A new Achilles’ heel in HIV discovered

Researchers at Helmholtz Institute Würzburg discover potential new antiviral targets in HIV-1

05-May-2023 - Ribonucleic acid (RNA) folds into complex structures, which allow it to interact specifically with other molecules in the cell. In HIV-1, minute differences in RNA folding can be crucial in determining whether viral RNA is “packaged” and thus leads to viral replication. This has now been ...

Where the HI-Virus sleeps in the brain

20-Mar-2023 - The human immunodeficiency virus HIV-1 is able to infect various tissues in humans. Once inside the cells, the virus integrates its genome into the cellular genome and establishes persistent infections. The role of the structure and organisation of the host genome in HIV-1 infection is not well ...