Dr. Leor Weinberger: Overcoming the HIV Therapy Mismatch

Dr. Leor Weinberger begins this episode by talking about his motivation for developing a novel therapy for HIV. He explains the fundamental mismatch between the mutation and transmission of the disease and how our therapies work, which inspired him to take a novel approach to try and combat the disease.  We discuss topics such as the potential for scientists to give up on an HIV vaccine and why it seems like there are no good general antiviral drugs. To lead up to discussing Dr. Weinberger's new therapy, we hear a bit about the history of HIV therapeutics. After walking us through this history, culminating with the development and widespread adoption of the modern day drug cocktails for HIV patients, Dr. Weinberger introduces us to a fundamentally new type of therapy he has been working on to overcome previous barriers. He explains some of the origins of this new approach and explains how this approach is based on molecular parasites that steal resources from the virus.  This new approach, which Dr. Weinberger refers to as therapeutic interfering particles, uses defective particles that function not by poisoning the virus but by stealing from the virus. He then explains how this approach overcomes the fundamental mismatch between HIV and HIV therapies. We hear some of the story of the long road from the initial idea for this work to the status of the therapy today. Dr. Weinberger also explains a sort of happy accident that happened in a petri dish that may have enabled this research to finally move forward. Finally, we spend some time on the lower level mechanisms of how this therapy works, such as how you could deliver this treatment into a patient. We also talk about safety and the potential for public hesitancy. We conclude with a mention about the potential for this type of approach to be used for COVID-19 therapy. Watch Dr. Weinberger's TED Talk on this topic at https://www.ted.com/talks/leor_weinberger_can_we_create_vaccines_that_mutate_and_spread?language=en