Medical treatment that targets human proteins rather than ever-mutating viruses may one day help HIV-positive people whose bodies have built a resistance to “cocktails” currently used to keep them healthy, according to a Keck School of Medicine of USC researcher.
I-Chueh Huang has spent 13 years researching how the human immune system controls viral infections. His lab recently pinpointed a protein variant that can be targeted to prevent the human immunodeficiency virus from harming HIV-positive individuals.
“Most HIV drugs target the virus,” said Huang, assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Keck School of Medicine, which ranked No. 1 in National Institutes of Health funds received per principal investigator in 2016.