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Comment by lell | Hacker News Reader

I read the plos article when it came out. Basically, when a cell realises it is infected with a virus sometimes it will try to kill itself. There are a bunch of checks it does to make sure killing itself is a good idea. Many viruses try to counter these checks. DRACO works by short circuiting the detection -> kill self pathway.

It's a great idea. But sometimes a large proportion of cells can get infected when you have a virus. Someone might get in a lot of trouble if all their infected cells instantly died. Like, can anyone speculate what the side effect would be for an AIDS patient? I don't know myself, but I'd want to know more about this before saying this is a miracle cure.

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"Someone might get in a lot of trouble if all their infected cells instantly died."

This was directly addressed in the linked article.

Sounds like a perfect beginning to a real "I am Legend" scenario. Imagine someone releasing a virus that could cross the blood-brain barrier (modified Rabies?) that just infects the cells and causes some minor symptoms that appear to be a standard cold. But anyone who takes this drug will have those brain cells self-destruct right?

I found the author's contention that the cells were about to be killed by the virus anyways fairly convincing, but this is why we have tests in animals first.

If you could infect a target with a designer virus, why not just make it kill them directly? Unless you're the villain in a James Bond movie, of course ;)

Very true. I guess one would have to have some grudge against the company(s) that made this drug in the future and want to prove that it's dangerous with a zombie apocalypse.

This was addressed in the article: almost all viruses kill their host cell anyway, so killing the infected host cell faster doesn't add any risk or harm. Taking the infected cell out of circulation means that a lot fewer cells get infected so it's a net win.

If the infected cells tend to live a long time and the antiviral drug kills them all at once then it's a big difference. To see this, take the idea "to the limit":

Imagine if virus-infected cells lived an average of ten years, that the antiviral drug kills every infected cell in the body instantly, and that every cell in the body is infected. The effect of taking the drug in such an instance would be far worse than letting the virus attack the body unchecked.

Now, this obviously isn't a "reasonable" example, but it does show that there are parameters for which there the drug does harm the patient. Determining whether that risk is actually worth worrying about is a job for science.

Ah, but infected cells are hijacked to do the virus' job rather than the job they are intended for so any killed cells weren't aiding the body.

So is DRACO itself a kind of virus ? How does it visit all the cells...

DRACO is a drug, and travels through the body by diffusion the same way other drugs do.

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