Proteins That Could Be Used to Halt HIV Are Identified

A research team announced yesterday that it has identified about 270 human proteins that the AIDS virus apparently needs to infect a person, instantly providing researchers with dozens of new strategies for blocking or aborting HIV infection. The vast majority -- more than 200 -- were not previously known to play a role in the complicated choreography by which the virus attaches to a cell, enters it, gets copied and establishes permanent residence. The discovery was made with a technique called a "genome-wide scan," which is only a few years old. Current AIDS drugs work by interrupting one of four main steps in HIV's life cycle. The new study suggests that there are many more to target. The research, led by Stephen J. Elledge of Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was published online yesterday by the journal Science.