A natural defense against HIV. (University of California, San Francisco)

University of California, San Francisco

As pharmacologists all over the world were searching for a new molecule capable of killing HIV, Jay A. Levy of the Department of Medicine and Cancer Research Institute of the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco has found a substance produced by the body that halts viral replication.

The substance is the host's natural response to infection and can hold in check the virus for a long incubation period that may last over ten years. This substance is a protein of the large cytokine family.

The role of cytokine is to exchange messages between different cells. But …