StandartNews /2001/:
The results were reported at a number of international congresses. A patent for the technology has been already taken out, says Evgeni Gabev from the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Parazitology with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Dr. Gabev, what are the latest achievements in AIDS combat in Bulgaria?
For 12 years now the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Parazitology has been working towards finding and testing the preparations for AIDS treatment based on an entirely new principle.

The AIDS inducing virus is one of the most minute ones - its diameter is about 100 nannometers, it can only be seen under an electronic microscope. It has turned out that this virus has a very complex biochemical composition and rather rich RNA structure, which conveys the whole information of the virus.

Outwardly, the AIDS inducing virus (HIV) reminds a sea mine. To further the resemblance - what a sea mine does to a ship that runs into it, the same does the virus touching an immune cell - it causes inevitable destruction. The protruding minute spindles of the virus are completely identical with to detonators.

The only difference is that in a human body the "explosion" produces no noise.

And probably the immune cell invariably dies?
No, it's not like that. The surface of the cell is covered with molecules, the receptors. Via them the immune cell comes into contact with the virus and the so-called trans-membrane signaling is triggered off.

It prepares the immune cell for receiving a chemical signal from the virus, which makes the cell to reproduce viruses, the most dangerous intracellular parasites. Or, to put it in other words, it is wholly reproduced by the receiving cell and destroys it completely at the same time.

What is essential in the new method of treatment?
The virus provoking the disease attacks the immune cell (CD4 + T lymphocyte) penetrating through its receptor molecules, part of virus' components get destroyed, or as we put it "get stripped", and this triggers off very complex genetic and biochemical processes.

The information it employs to attack the cell is recorded in its RNA, but the treacherous thing about the HIV virus is that its RNA transforms into DNA directly in the cell itself.

This DNA attacks the genetic code of the immune cell, incorporates in it and can rest their for 8-10 years in a latent state. The cell is actually infected but the disease is not developing.

The new medicine unlocks the resources of the target cell enabling it to protect itself. We manage to do it blocking the trans-membrane signaling between the HIV virus and the immune cell.

To put it figuratively, the virus finds itself in front of a locked up door, to which there is no key.
Left outside the cell, this intracellular parasite perishes, for it has no chance to reproduce.

Author: Georgi Atanasov

Democritus: Read more at Dr. Gabev's website