Breakthroughs in Battling HIV & Alzheimers??

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<p>[Doctors</a> may have found a way to destroy HIV | Top Stories | FOX11AZ.com | News for Tucson, Arizona](<a href=“http://www.fox11az.com/news/topstories/stories/NWkmsb20080730_hiv_breakt-hrough.1971ecbd.html]Doctors”>http://www.fox11az.com/news/topstories/stories/NWkmsb20080730_hiv_breakt-hrough.1971ecbd.html)</p>

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<p>[TauRx</a> - Alzheimer’s disease | Rember? | Singapore Aberdeen | Memory Loss | Alzheimer’s Cure | Tau Tangles | Drug Discovery Company | 1 CAD 2008 Chicago | Disease Modifying | Alzheimer’s Drug](<a href=“http://www.taurx.com:80/]TauRx”>http://www.taurx.com:80/)</p>

<p>Are these stories hype, or has real progress been made?</p>

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<p>Well, what gets reported in the press is always a little bit hype. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>The Alzheimer’s treatment seems very promising, but the jury’s still out for me personally – there are a few very symptomatic pathological signs of Alzheimer’s (one of which are the tau fibers targeted by TauRx), but nobody is totally sure whether they’re causative or whether they’re signs that the cell is trying to deal with some deeper underlying problem.</p>

<p>As for HIV, I believe there are parts of the genome that mutate less than others, but I would not say unequivocally that there are parts that do never and could never mutate. Natural selection is incredibly powerful, and if we put selective pressure on HIV with particular drugs, it will mutate in ways we don’t expect. The best strategy, as with antibacterials, is to develop many strong front-line drugs and use them in combination so the virus doesn’t get a chance to develop beneficial mutations.</p>

<p>These are very hard problems. There are a lot of very smart people tackling them, and progress is being made, but they’re still very hard problems.</p>