Nanomedicines Make a New Way to Deal with HIV

Simply the name 'nanomedicines' is intimidating to people but scientists have queried HIV groups and found receptiveness toward the idea of such medicines if they can be shown to be effective.  (Science Daily:  New nanomedicine approach aims to improve HIV drug therapies)

HIV is a scourge which many of us saw actually develop in our lifetimes, beginning in about 1980, and going through various phases to reach the point today at which HIV generally doesn't mean a death sentence so long as sufficient medicine is available.  In many places the medicines are not available and the death rate continues but that's much less likely in developed nations.

The question to many is whether it could have been stopped if it had been addressed when it first appeared.  Here at the Rockhouse, we don't know but we do know we want any medical threat addressed quickly and seriously with Zika being the primary example today.


Nanomedicines are seriously spooky and here's the description from the researchers.

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale.  Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to the prevention and treatment of disease in the human body.  This evolving discipline has the potential to dramatically change medical science and is already having an impact in a number of clinically used therapies and diagnostics worldwide.

- Science Daily

Frankly, that sounded like the scientific version of a corporate mission statement so I'm not exactly feeling a warm fluffy blanket around me.

Here is the result of some of their research.

Through the use of a rapid small-scale nanomedicine screening approach developed at Liverpool, the researchers were able to generate a novel water dispersible nanotherapy, hence removing the need to use alcohol in the paediatric medicine.

- Science Daily

This seems an excellent thing to do and it's to the benefit of pediatrics which we like even more but it's still really too distant for us to approach.

We don't dispute the potential truth of the following but we don't yet have much in it.

Professor Owen said "The fruits of our interdisciplinary research are beginning to be realised. Our approach has the potential to overcome challenges with current antiretroviral therapy, which include administration of high doses needed to achieve efficacious concentrations in the body, and the urgent need for better formulations for children living with HIV."

Professor Rannard added "The wide applicability of our strategy has implications for multiple therapy development programmes and we are actively engaged in the creation of nanomedicine options to impact a range of clinical needs."

- Science Daily

We want to believe, we really do, and part of that is driven by how much we hear of medications which don't work or are losing their efficacy in fighting infections as with increasing virulence in disease due to misuse and abuse of antibiotics.

The larger driver is we have lost friends to AIDS and HIV, sometimes much closer than beloved Broadway stars and artists in general who, at first, seemed the most vulnerable before it started spreading generically.

We want to believe the medication will come which can not only control such diseases but cure them and bring patients back to their original healthy goodness.  That would appear miraculous to us if they did it but so did the polio vaccine when Jonas Salk presented it to our parents.  It is our fervent hope and belief it will come and quite possibly from the research into nanomedicines.  That it has not come yet does not make us lose the faith.

(Ed:  you would have been dangerous as a preacher!)

Maybe so (larfs) and I'll skip anything cynical just now.