Leading scientists issue research road map to an AIDS cure




Visitors look at the new panels to the AIDS Quilt on exhibit on the Washington Mall April 29, 2000. Over twelve years later International AIDS specialists on Thursday, July 19, 2012, released what they call a road map for research towards a cure for HIV.

Visitors look at the new panels to the AIDS Quilt on exhibit on the Washington Mall April 29, 2000. Over twelve years later International AIDS specialists on Thursday, July 19, 2012, released what they call a road map for research towards a cure for HIV.
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The Associated Press
Published Friday, Jul. 20, 2012 6:41AM EDT
Last Updated Friday, Jul. 20, 2012 7:21AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- For years it seemed hopeless. Now the hunt for a cure for AIDS is back on.

International AIDS specialists on Thursday released what they call a road map for research toward a cure for HIV -- a strategy for global teams of scientists to explore a number of intriguing leads that just might, years from now, pan out.

"Today's the first step," said French Nobel laureate Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of the HIV virus who also co-chaired development of the strategy.

"No one thinks it's going to be easy," added strategy co-chair Dr. Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco. "Some don't think it's possible."

The announcement came just before the International AIDS Conference begins on Sunday, when more than 20,000 scientists, activists and policymakers gather in the nation's capital with a far different focus: how to dramatically cut the spread of the AIDS virus, what they call "turning the tide" of the epidemic, using some powerful tools already in hand.

Chief among them is getting more of the world's 34 million HIV-infected people on life-saving medications, so they stay healthier and are less likely to infect others. By itself, that is a huge hurdle. Just 8 million of the 15 million treatment-eligible patients in AIDS-ravaged poor regions of the world are getting the drugs.

But Barre-Sinoussi, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, which hosts the conference, said that lifelong treatment, as good as it is, isn't the end-all solution -- and that science finally is showing that a cure "could be a realistic possibility."

The panelists refused to estimate Thursday how much this research would cost. But already, the National Institutes of Health has increased spending on cure-related research, about $56 million last year, according to a report in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Scientists attempting cure research will meet Friday and Saturday, ahead of the AIDS conference, to compare notes.

And the new strategy won praise from Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS.

"The previous generation fought for treatment," he said. "Our generation must fight for a cure."

Today's anti-HIV drugs can tamp down the virus to undetectable levels -- but they don't eradicate it. Instead, tiny amounts of the virus can hide out in different tissues and roar back if medication is stopped.

That means there's no certainty of developing a cure.

"I'm not sure we can, but we're going to try," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a recent interview. "This virus is uncanny in its ability to be able to integrate itself into a cell, as a reservoir, and no matter what we've done so far, we have not been able to eliminate that reservoir."

Yet one person in the world apparently has been cured: Timothy Ray Brown of San Francisco, who in 2006 was living in Berlin when in addition to his HIV, he got leukemia.

Brown underwent a blood stem cell transplant -- what once was a bone marrow transplant -- to treat the cancer. His own immune system was destroyed. And his German transplant surgeon found a donor who was among the 1 per cent of whites who have a gene mutation that makes them naturally resistant to HIV -- their cells lack the specific doorway the virus uses to get inside.

It worked. Brown has been off HIV medications for five years and is doing well, Deeks said Thursday.

That dangerous and expensive transplant isn't a practical solution, but it has sparked a variety of research into other possible ways to eradicate HIV. Already, 12 early-stage studies involving small numbers of patients -- fewer than 200 people worldwide -- are under way, the international panel said Thursday. Results to see if any are promising enough to pursue should be out in the next year or two.

The priorities of the new cure research strategy:

Determine why HIV hibernates and persists.
Learn why some people are naturally resistant. In addition to that 1 per cent of people with the gene mutation, researchers now are studying a small group of patients in France who started medication soon after they were infected and many years later were able to stop the drugs without the virus rebounding.
Develop and test strategies to make HIV patients more naturally resistant. Already gene therapy studies are under way to knock that HIV doorway out of people's own infection-fighting blood cells.
Learn where all those secret reservoirs are.
Develop strategies to attack the reservoirs. One new attempt uses drugs to wake up the dormant HIV so the immune system can spot and attack it, what Deeks called the "shock and kill approach." Last spring, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, researchers reported that a drug normally used for lymphoma made some latent HIV rapidly detectable in six patients. Deeks has a similar study under way using an old anti-alcoholism drug.
Develop good tests to measure these tiny amounts of dormant HIV, crucial to telling if any cure attempts are promising short of taking patients off their regular medication.

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Indian scientists try to crack monsoon source code


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A man holds an umbrella to shield himself from the rain as he walks at Girgaum Chowpatty beach during a monsoon shower in Mumbai, July 6, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash

Scientists try to crack monsoon code

Scientists aided by supercomputers are trying to unravel one of Mother Nature's biggest mysteries -- the vagaries of the summer monsoon rains that bring life, and sometimes death, to India every year.  Full Article 
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Indian scientists try to crack monsoon source code


From NDTV Profit

A farmer works in a paddy field on the outskirts of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura, July 9, 2012. REUTERS/Jayanta Dey

By Ross Colvin and Jatindra Dash
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESHWAR | Fri Jul 20, 2012 3:05pm IST
(Reuters) - Scientists aided by supercomputers are trying to unravel one of Mother Nature's biggest mysteries -- the vagaries of the summer monsoon rains that bring life, and sometimes death, to India every year.
In a first-of-its-kind project, Indian scientists aim to build computer models that would allow them to make a quantum leap in predicting the erratic movements of the monsoon.
If successful, the impact would be life-changing in a country where 600 million people depend on farming for their livelihoods and where agriculture contributes 15 percent to the economy. The monsoon has been dubbed by some as India's "real finance minister".
"Ultimately it's all about water. Everybody needs water and whatever amount of water you get here is mainly through rainfall," said Shailesh Nayak, secretary of the Earth Sciences Ministry.
India typically receives 75 percent of its annual rain from the June-September monsoon as moisture-laden winds sweep in from the southwest of the peninsula.
The importance of the recently launched five-year "monsoon mission" has been underscored by this summer's patchy and below-average rains, which have provoked much anxious sky-watching and fears of drought in India's northwest, even as floods in the northeast displaced 2 million people and killed more than 100.
Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar cautioned this week that there was no need for alarm just yet, although he fretted that the monsoon was "playing hide-and-seek".
Working with counterparts in the United States and Britain, Indian scientists are trying to crack the monsoon's "source code" using super-fast computers to build the world's first short-range and long-range computer models that can give much more granular information about the monsoon's movements.
This would help India conserve depleting water resources and agricultural output would get a boost as farmers would be able to plan their crops better. Armed with more precise forecasts, state governments would be better prepared, in theory, for disasters such as the recent floods in Assam.
It would also bring more certainty to economic policy- making. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is gambling on a normal monsoon this year to boost weak economic growth.
Weather forecasting, however, is just one of the challenges facing India's agricultural sector. Water conservation and proper irrigation remain a problem, agricultural policy-making is muddled and the government is under pressure to cut expensive diesel subsidies, which mostly benefit richer farmers.
EXTENDING SHORT-TERM FORECASTS
More than half of the arable land in India, one of the world's biggest producers of cotton, rice, sugar and wheat, is rain-fed. A successful monsoon means rural residents have more money to spend on everything from motorcycles to refrigerators.
"We do feel under a lot of pressure," said S.C. Bhan, senior scientist at the India Meteorological Office (IMD), when asked about the challenges the IMD faces in trying to correctly predict the monsoon's movements.
The weather office publishes a forecast in April predicting how much rain will fall over the four months and whether the monsoon will be "normal". It does this by comparing sea temperatures, wind speeds and air pressure with data from the past 50 years.
In June, the forecast is updated to give monthly rainfall figures for July and August -- the main growing months -- as well as seasonal figures for four broad regions.
Despite advances in computer weather models, the statistical model remains the most accurate long-range forecaster of monsoon rains, Bhan said.
But only up to a point.
Many of the weather office's long-range summer monsoon predictions last year were inaccurate. It also struggled to predict extreme weather events such as the drought in 2009 -- a year when it had forecast normal monsoon rains.
There is a lot the IMD struggles to predict -- when the rains will arrive throughout the country, where exactly they will fall, which parts will receive the most and how long they will last. Short-range forecasts give more precision but offer only a five- to seven-day window into the future, which farmers say is too short.
The monsoon mission aims to extend those short-term forecasts to at least 15 days and enable the weather office to give much more detailed seasonal projections.
"If anybody can tell me there is going to be a dry spell after initial showers that will make a lot of difference for me. It means life or death for farmers," said P. Chengal Reddy, leader of a national consortium of farmers' associations.
Several farmers in Maharashtra state, already at the end of their tether and deeply in debt after buying fertilizer and seeds, reportedly killed themselves last month after rains abruptly stopped, farmers' rights activist Kishor Tiwari said.
Many farmers ignore the weather forecasts and rely instead on Hindu astronomical almanacs and signs in nature.
"We were able to guess from the nature of the croaking of frogs if there would be any rain in the near future," said Trilocha Pradhan, 63, who farms about seven acres of rice paddy in the mostly agricultural state of Odisha. "Such croaking is rare today," he added, blaming the effects of climate change.
(Additional reporting by Ratnajyoti Dutta and Diksha Madhok in NEW DELHI, and Vikas Vasudeva in CHANDIGARH; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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100 yrs on, France’s radium craze turns health scare

CHAVILLE, FRANCE: The Belle Epoque, France's golden era at the turn of the last century, bequeathed Paris elegant landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, but also a more sinister legacy of radioactive floors and backyards which the capital is only now addressing.

When the Franco-Polish Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium in 1898, she set off a craze for the luminescent metal among Parisians, who started using it for everything from alarm clock dials to lipsticks and even water fountains.

"The history of radium started in Paris," said Eric Lanes, head of radioactive decontamination at France's national agency for radioactive waste, ANDRA.

After Curie showed that radium could be used to destroy cancerous cells, people assumed that the new element had miraculous healing properties and started putting it in everything from body lotions to cough syrups.

"Cancerous cells are more sensitive to radiation than healthy ones. Curie understood that," said Lanes. "But some people embarked on businesses more akin to charlatans' tricks."

Curie herself died at 66 from her prolonged, unprotected exposure to radium. Lanes said the clean-up was being undertaken as a precautionary measure under a recent French law requiring that preventative steps be taken in a case of a suspected health risk even in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence.

"We have never found any worrying situations," Lanes said. "We're talking about levels that are too small to create a health impact." 
=========================================================================
 

A Glowing Complexion

The discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 led to its use, first as a research tool and then later in the development of medical and commercial applications.
[Radium] became involved in the physical system of alpha, beta, and gamma rays and the atomic structure; in the chemical system of atomic weights, emanations, and transmutations; in the medical system of cancer treatments and radon spas; in the commercial system of luminous watches, women’s cosmetics, and medical remedies; in the artistic system of luminous paintings and middle-class American culture; and in the industrial system of radium extractions, the production of luminous paint, and the beauty industry.
Rentetzi (2007, p. 1)

Medical and other uses of radium

Medically, radium was usually injected or taken in pills. It was used to treat a wide range of ailments including hair loss, impotence, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, rheumatism, gout, sciatica, nephritis and anemia. The use of radium in medicine led to a craze for radium-based products, and radioactivity in general, during the 1920s and 1930s. Commerically, it was added to a wide range of products including wool for babies, water dispensers, chocolate, soda water, male supports, foundation garments, condoms, toothpaste, suppositories, cigarettes, cleaning products, boot polish, fertilisers, luminous paints and cosmetics.

Radior

Based in London, Radior Co. Ltd., marketed a line of radium cosmetics sometime before 1920. Their product range included Night Cream, Rouge, Compact Powder, Vanishing Cream, Talcum Powder, Hair Tonic, Skin Soap, Face Powder in six tints (Blanche, Naturelle, Rachel, Flesh Ochre and Brunette) and assorted pads which could be strapped to the face.
An ever-flowing Fountain of Youth and Beauty has at last been found in the Energy Rays of Radium.
When scientists discovered Radium they hardly dreamed they had unearthed a revolutionary “Beauty Secret.” They know it now. Radium Rays vitalize and energize all living tissue. This Energy has been turned into Beauty’s aid. Each and every ‘Radior’ Toilet Requisite contains a definite qualtity of Actual Radium.
Radior advertisement, 1918
According to the company the product sold well in the Britain, possibly due to the fact that it was taken up and distributed by Boots “in all their five hundred and eighty-five stores” (Advertising, 1920) as well as Harrods, Selfridges and Whiteley’s department stores in London. It was also available in selected stores in some parts of the Commonwealth.
“Radior” Chin straps are guaranteed to contain Radio-active substance and Radium Bromide. If placed on the face where the skin has become wrinkled or tired the radio-active forces immediately take effect on the nerves and tissues. A continuous steady current of energy flows into the skin, and before long the wrinkles have disappeared, the nerves have become strong and energised, and the tired muscles have become braced up and “ready for service.”
Radior advertisement (Sydney Morning Herald, 1915)
The product did less well in America when introduced there. In an interview, a company spokesperson, noted that market research put the cause for poor sales on the reduced use of radium in US medicine and public disbelief that such an expensive material could be used in cosmetic pads. The spokesperson explained that “It is possible to divide and subdivide radium until you can get as small an amount as one sixty-fourth of a cent’s worth. It seems incredible, I know, but chemists are used to these infinitesimal divisions. The radium would still be genuine and would retain all its valuable properties. For this reason and because of its enormous strength we are able to use it in these pads and still sell them at a profit.” (Advertiser, 1920). Radior countered the misconception with a guarantee that radium was present in every product. The good news is that the amount of radium used in each product was low.

Tho-Radium

In the early 1930s, a pharmacist, Alexis Moussali and a Parisian doctor, Alfred Curie, launched a French range of radioactive beauty products, first from the Rues des Capucines and then from 146 Avenue Victor Hugo. Alexis Moussali was probably the brains behind the commercial operation, with Alfred Curie possibly brought either because of his surname – (he was not related to Marie or Pierre Curie) and/or the fact that he was a doctor.
The product range, which included cleansing milk, skin cream, powder, rouge, lipstick and toothpaste, was called Tho-Radia as it contained thorium chloride and radium bromide, both of which were radioactive. The products were relatively expensive for the time, partly due to the cost of the radioactive materials. As with Radior, one hopes that the expense of the ‘active ingredients’ may have resulted in reduced amounts of thorium and radium being used.
The Tho-Radia cream was sold for 15 francs per 155 gram pot; soap, 3 francs per 100 gram bar; powder, 12 francs per 50 gram box; toothpaste, 6 francs per tube. Despite the relatively high price, it sold throughout France from 1933 through to the early 1960s. When tested in the 1960s the products were found to be radioactive (Mould, n.d. p. 3). Fortunately, I can find no indication that Tho-Radia products found a distributor in the English-speaking world.
Like other products of the time, Tho-Radia was advertised as being a scientific method of beauty (Méthod Scientific de Beauté). The ‘benefits’ of radium were highly publicised in the press and therefore well known by the general public in the 1930s. Product advertising shows the face lit from below which makes it look like it is ‘glowing’. What could be more healthy than a glowing complexion?
An associated booklet produced by the company proclaims that the beauty cream:
Elle stimule la vitalité cellulaire active la circulation, raffermit less tissues, élimine la graisse, empêche las deformation des pores, prevenient et guérit dartes, boutons, rougeeurs, defend la peau contre les miasmas et les intemperies de l’épipiderme, evite at supprime les rides, conserve la fraîcheaur et l’éclat du teint.
Translation:
Stimulates cellular vitality, activates circulation, firms skin, eliminates fats, stops enlarged pores forming, stops and cures boils, pimples, redness, pigmentation, protects from the elements, stops ageing and gets rid of wrinkles, conserves the freshness and brightness of the complexion.
(Tho-Radia Dictionary of Beauty, Dictionnaire soins de Beauté)

Hindsight is a wonderful thing

The use of radioactive materials in cosmetics is a good example of the what can go wrong when the beauty industry jumps too quickly on the bandwagon of a scientific advance. This is not a fault that they share alone. Despite this, and other ingredients that would also prove detrimental to health, the role of science in the beauty industry was to increase, not diminish during the century. Even today, when so many are demanding more ‘natural’ products we still look to science to ensure their purity and safety.
April 14th 2009

Sources

Rentetzi, M. (2007). Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices. New York: Columbia University Press.

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