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New Ultra HIV Drug From Bananas

  • Spence Cooper
  • March 22, 2010
'Cavendish' bananas are the main commercial cu...
Bananas for HIV?

According to a University of Michigan Medical School study, a powerful new HIV inhibitor derived from bananas may unleash an array of novel treatments to prevent sexual transmission of HIV.

Researchers developed a method to isolate BanLec, the lectin — any of several plant glycoproteins that act like specific antibodies — found in bananas; BanLec is an effective anti-HIV lectin and is similar in potency to two current anti-HIV drugs, T-20 and maraviroc, currently in clinical use.

The heightened interest in lectins, an organic chemical in plants, is based on lectin’s ability to arrest a series of events that leads to a host of infections.

In laboratory tests, researchers say BanLec was as potent as the two current anti-HIV drugs mentioned above. And based on the findings published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, BanLec may become a less expensive new component of applied vaginal microbicides.

A BanLec ointment would be far less expensive than anti-retroviral medications derived from synthetic components. And BanLec may provide a wider range of protection.

“HIV is still rampant in the U.S. and the explosion in poorer countries continues to be a bad problem because of tremendous human suffering and the cost of treating it,”says study senior author David Markovitz, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School.

According to the published report in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, BanLec is a jacalin-related lectin isolated from the fruit of bananas, Musa acuminata. This lectin binds to high mannose carbohydrate structures, including those found on viruses containing glycosylated envelope proteins such as human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1). BanLec possesses potent anti-HIV activity. The mechanism for BanLec-mediated antiviral activity was investigated by determining if this lectin can directly bind the HIV-1 envelope protein and block entry of the virus into the cell.

“The problem with some HIV drugs is that the virus can mutate and become resistant, but that’s much harder to do in the presence of lectins,”says lead author Michael D. Swanson, a doctoral student in the graduate program in immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School. “Lectins can bind to the sugars found on different spots of the HIV-1 envelope, and presumably it will take multiple mutations for the virus to get around them,”he says.

It’s interesting to note that many pharmaceutical drugs are made from plants or plant properties. In some cases, chemicals extracted from plants are used directly as medicines; in other cases chemicals from plants are used to create new compounds for drugs. Thus, then, the allure for many of macrobiotic diets, where highly refined processed foods are replaced with raw or steamed cooked organically grown foods.

The macrobiotic philosophy is rooted in the writings of Hippocrates, a medical practitioner regarded as the father of medicine and author of the Hippocratic oath. All healing and health leads back to Mother Nature.

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