As HSUS’s undercover expose at the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) near Lafayette, La., one of America’s largest primate laboratories, gets attention on national television, including ABC’s News’ “Nightline”, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reports
Researchers have taken a major step toward developing a better animal model of human AIDS. Such a model could greatly improve researchers’ ability to evaluate potential strategies for preventing and treating the disease.
Researchers have lacked a reliable animal model in which to study HIV infection, because the virus replicates poorly in most other animals. But now a team assembled by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Paul D. Bieniasz of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) has genetically modified the human virus so that it can infect a species of rhesus monkeys. Viral infection in the monkeys mimics the early stages of HIV infection in humans.
