[Rayadriel]

I did a study, in one of my biomedical engineering classes, on viral traps and their possible use in eradicating HIV/AIDS, among other things. Has anyone else heard of this? If so, what are your thoughts/opinions on it. I haven't heard anything recently about the success of this process, so if anyone knows more on the subject, I would love to hear it. I've been trying to keep myself updated, but my sources are dried up right now. :)

[templelane]

Not an answer but another question! What is a viral trap? I would be very interested to know, can you post any links? Thank you :)

[Rayadriel]

A viral trap is were (in the case of HIV/AIDS) an erythrocytes (or red blood cell) is coated with a protein that has receptors that emulate what HIV generally binds to on CD4+ T cells. Therefore, if effective, the HIV will bind to the erythrocyte and release its RNA within. But because an erythrocyte doesn't have any DNA to alter, the virus effectively dies. If enough engineered blood is entered into a patient it's possible to lower the virus count to such a degree that the virus essentially dies of thereby curing the patient. When I was working on this, it was unknown whether this was even possible (completely eradicating the virus), but it at the very least had the potential to replace, and work more efficiently, that drugs currently available on the market today.

[asking]

Interesting. I hadn't heard of this either. You can Google the phrase and get a few hits, but not that many. Have you read the abstracts of the papers?