A viral gene drive could offer a new approach to fighting herpes
A viral gene drive could offer a new approach to fighting herpes
Tags: Gene drive, Gene drive mechanismsMeghan Rosen, ScienceNews, 2024.
The words “herpes” and “spread” in the same sentence don’t typically spell good news. Unless, that is, you’re talking about a busybody new virus. That virus includes designer DNA called a gene drive that spreads from one herpes simplex virus to another. And it may be a first step toward an entirely new way of treating the infection, researchers report September 17 in Nature Communications. For now, the team has shown simply that their gene drive DNA sequence can copy/paste itself into the genomes of other herpes viruses during an infection in mice. But the idea is to one day create a gene drive virus that shuts down herpes simplex infections in people, says Keith Jerome, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. Jerome ultimately wants to say to patients: “You don’t ever have to worry about this virus again. It’s never going to cause disease. You’re never going to infect another person. It just doesn’t matter to your life anymore.” Though some may consider herpes more annoyance than agony, “these viruses have a tremendous effect on people’s health,” Jerome says. They can cause a huge range of symptoms — some people don’t even know they’re infected while others sprout oozing sores around the genitals or mouth.
Current therapies include antivirals, but they just tamp the virus down, they don’t eradicate it. One challenge is that herpes can lie dormant in people’s nerve cells for months or years and then roar awake again, spawning fresh blisters. Infection lasts a lifetime. A therapy that disables the slumbering virus could potentially cure the infection. But how to do it? Marius Walter, a Fred Hutch virologist, remembers reading an article that claimed designing gene drives in viruses was impossible. “That got me thinking,” he says.