New targets for HIV

The mechanisms by which HIV binds to and fuses with host cells are well documented, but the pathway mediating the intermediate steps between binding and fusion is murky. Now, researchers in France and Italy have teased out a signaling cascade modulated by purines that leads to fusion following HIV-1 binding.¹

The findings open up a suite of new therapeutic target candidates, as inhibiting any member of the purinergic pathway impaired the replication of both standard and drug-resistant strains of the virus...