Daily News | These Philly high-schoolers helped with a new study of a possible treatment for HIV
Tiffani Billups burst in the front door of her home in Southwest Philadelphia and cried out excitedly: “Mom! I’m working with HIV!”she wasn’t working with an active form of the virus, but a genetically engineered versionYet Billups, now a senior at Carver Engineering and Science school, had nevertheless been conducting legitimate experiments at Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute, testing a potential new treatment for HIV.
To understand how, it helps to recall the property that makes HIV so insidious. The virus infects cells in the immune system, directly interfering with the body’s ability to fight it off . Tietjen likens the fight to a homeowner battling an infestation of mice. Current drugs act only when the animals emerge from a mousehole, whereas hopeaphenol seems to keep them inside.
The students measured the effect of hopeaphenol on two types of cytokines — chemical signals that the immune system uses to marshal its defenses. They found that while the compound interfered with one of these helpful signals, the other was largely unaffected — a good sign. “You get old and jaded like me,” the scientist said. “Then you see a young person come in, and you see that spark. I like to think that we all give a lot to each other.”
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