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Thursday, 7th February 2008 (6064 views)

A team from the University of North Carolina have developed a technique to use gold nanoparticles to restore the anti-HIV capabilities of normally inactive inhibitors, according to reports.

According to HIV charity NAM, the technique could be used to create large gold-drug complex molecules that act like and interact with large viral proteins.

Eventually, the team hopes to design a mechanism that will allow them to introduce the agents into cell spaces that had previously been difficult to target with small-molecule drugs. These include the viral infectivity factor, an HIV accessory protein that has been a target for drug delivery for years but has so far dodged inhibition.

Gold nanoparticles were originally used to stain glass until chemist and physicist Michael Faraday began to research their scientific uses in the 1850s.

Nanogold has since been successfully used for a number of medical applications, including treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

 

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