Does this mean there won't be use for antiviral drugs soon?

[Karma]

http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2532

[Mithril]

No, because it clearly says that it's been used for fungus, not viruses.

 

Second of all, the method uses the same principle our body uses to get rid of pathogens. That is, pathogen-specific antibodies recognise whatever antigen they're supposed to recognise and pathogens are cleared or destroyed or somehow incapacitated. The problem being that viruses are always slightly changing the sequences of their surface proteins through random mutation so that antibodies or drugs can no longer bind.

[jordan19]

No, because it clearly says that it's been used for fungus, not viruses.

 

Second of all, the method uses the same principle our body uses to get rid of pathogens. That is, pathogen-specific antibodies recognise whatever antigen they're supposed to recognise and pathogens are cleared or destroyed or somehow incapacitated. The problem being that viruses are always slightly changing the sequences of their surface proteins through random mutation so that antibodies or drugs can no longer bind.

 

Also, not all viruses cause viremia. Also, antibodies are not as effective in killing viruses anyways, its the cellular arm which kills infected cells, which antibodies fail to recognize.

 

Given the wide variety of antigenic shift and drift on viruses, it's hard to develop an antibody for a particular virus (there are many genotypes, clades)

[thebouque]

The vast majority of viral infections don't need antiviral drugs anyway

[AndreaM]

Add to that viruses that have latent DNA, like herpes. This wouldn't even come close to touching them.