Publications by authors named "Grace London"

The majority of HIV-1 infections occur via sexual intercourse. Women are the most affected by the epidemic, particularly in developing countries, due to their socio-economic dependence on men and the fact that they are often victims of gender based sexual violence. Despite significant efforts that resulted in the reduction of infection rates in some countries, there is still need for effective prevention methods against the virus.

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Article Synopsis
  • Aptamers are synthetic molecules similar to antibodies that can prevent HIV infection; researchers isolated RNA aptamers targeting the HIV-1CAP45 virus, which is particularly common in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • After nine rounds of SELEX, twenty-three aptamer clones were identified, showing up to 50% inhibition of HIV-1CAP45 at concentrations between 0.1-50 nM; among these, some bound tightly to important viral proteins (gp120 and gp41).
  • The findings suggest that these aptamers could serve both as tools for studying HIV-1 entry mechanisms and as potential treatments to inhibit HIV infection.
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HIV-associated cardiomyopathy (HIVCM) is of clinical concern in developing countries because of a high HIV-1 prevalence, especially subtype C, and limited access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). For these reasons, we investigated the direct and indirect effects of HIV-1 subtype C infection of cultured human cardiomyocytes and the mechanisms leading to cardiomyocytes damage; as well as a way to mitigate the damage. We evaluated a novel approach to mitigate HIVCM using a previously reported gp120 binding and HIV-1 neutralizing aptamer called UCLA1.

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