Retrovirus Treatment?

[IwillbeMD!]

As I am a pre-medical student and do not know anything really yet, so this may sound very naive...and this is probably in the wrong forum.

I will be attempting to share this idea that I had which involves HIV/AIDS

My understanding: Retroviruses rely on Reverse transcriptase to successfully convert the viral RNA to DNA which will then be incorporated into the hosts DNA and the hosts machinery will take over, leading to life long infection.

Many drugs that I have quickly researched attempt to block the action of reverse transcriptase by a variety of inhibitors. Drug cocktails also attempt to delay the onset of AIDS but the rapidly evolving nature of HIV requires the patients to switch cocktails often in order to treat the mutations that accumulate due to the sloppy reverse transcription.

So what would happen if someone were to manufacture a retrovirus that did not make as many mistakes? Could this possibly slow down the mutation rate of HIV and possibly be more treatable by one drug cocktail? This may have just the opposite effect though and make for a more efficiently replicating HIV.

Any thoughts? Thanks

-MK-6/6/2014

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[Bolingbroke]

So what would happen if someone were to manufacture a retrovirus that did not make as many mistakes?

1. Retroviruses utilize reverse transcriptase which is inherently sloppy when it comes to translating the RNA to DNA. Trying to engineer a reverse transcriptase which is more precise is currently beyond present day technology.AFAIK.

2. You can't snap your fingers and replace every HIV virus with an engineered HIV virus with a lower rate of transcription errors, assuming any world government would be crazy enough to let you try. If you did engineer such a virus, it would not have an evolutionary advantage over the current HIV virus. For one thang, your engineered virus couldn't avoid getting wiped out by AIDS drugs being used in millions of people, and no, nobody will stop their medications in order for your virus to spread.

3. It would be logical to engineer a relatively harmless virus which selectively inserts itself into the DNA-genome bound version of HIV, hence disrupting its transcription and destroying HIV reservoirs in the body. AFAIK, present day science does not posses the knowledge required to engineer such a virus.

4. There might be genomic police, which form a final layer of defense between native DNA and viral hitchhikers. AFAIK, not much is currently known about how the genome defends against retroviruses.

 

[Fedaykin]

So what would happen if someone were to manufacture a retrovirus that did not make as many mistakes? Could this possibly slow down the mutation rate of HIV and possibly be more treatable by one drug cocktail?

No, because HIV would still exist. You would just unleash a new virus on the world that's similar to HIV and possibly easier to treat. Because viruses don't undergo niche competition creating and releasing this new virus wouldn't mean anything for extant HIV.

I'm also going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're curious and that myself and @Bolingbroke didn't just do your homework for you.