Aust researchers have breakthrough in HIV research

The Melbourne scientists have been able to imitate latency in the laboratory, something previously unattainable. (AAP: Yang Zongyou)

A research group at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne has produced findings that could unlock doors to more effective HIV treatments.

The director of infectious diseases at the Alfred, Professor Sharon Lewin, says one of the problems with HIV is that it hides from the immune system, but the team has found a new way of investigating this.

"[HIV] actually is quite clever in that in addition to actually infecting and killing a cell, it can also hide within a cell, and it does that because it's able to integrate, or enter into the person's DNA," she said.

"There's not many viruses that can do that. Once it's in the DNA of the cell, the cell can no longer spit it out, basically, and it will stay there for the life of the cell."

Professor Lewin says these "latent" cells, which carry the HIV code, are the reason HIV cannot be cured.

"The minute you stop the drugs, those cells that carry the pieces of HIV genetics in its own DNA can then in effect refuel the fire of HIV replication," she said.

"People initially thought that if you were on treatment long enough, you'd just wait until those infected cells die off, and then perhaps you could be on treatment for 10 years.

"But once we developed ways of measuring those latently infected cells, the calculations now are you'd need to be on treatment for 60 years, so effectively lifelong treatment, unless we develop ways to target those latently infected cells."

Professor Lewin says the best way to attack HIV is to target it before it integrates with the cell's DNA.

A new class of drugs, called integrase inhibitors, can prevent the integration. Professor Lewin says these drugs were recently approved.

"They're new, they work very well, they'll probably become widely used, but currently we only use them in people with difficult to treat HIV," she said.

"The problem is that even if we diagnose HIV within a week or two of becoming infected, you've already got this whole pool of latently infected cells that's set up within weeks of infection, so you can't get rid of those infected cells, even if you then went on an integrase inhibitor."