Tricia Perry’s Blog

Indian doc develops enzyme that can destroy HIV

Priyanjana Dutta / CNN-IBN
Published on Friday , September 14, 2007 at 15:56 in Health section

Tags: HIV, AIDS , Bangalore

Bangalore: Dr Indrani Sarkar has has every reason to be excited. Her PhD thesis, which started in 2002 at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany, has thrown open the doors for developing enzymes that can destroy the dreaded Human Immuno-deficiency Virus or HIV within infected cells permanently.

Indrani and a team of scientists have developed an enzyme called Tre. Tre is a custom enzyme capable of detecting, recognising and destroying HIV, much like a pair of molecular scissors.

“In laymans terms, it’s an engineered enzyme which recognises sequences in the HIV genome that is duplicated, integrated virus and by the process of recombination, it cuts out the virus from the genome,” says she.

The biggest challenge with treating HIV today is that the virus becomes dormant and often develops resistance to HIV drugs.

The only way then to cure HIV is to get rid of the virus completely and Tre, the enzyme that Indrani constructed after a year and its 126 “cycles of mutation” totally deplete HIV in the human genome in three months in laboratory conditions.

“It’s a beautiful approach, but like any other drug, this one too will take a few years to reach clinics — anywhere between five and 20 years actually. A lot of research has to be done because since one is working with a novel enzyme, one has to engineer the enzyme,” says she.

According to the latest statistics given out by UNAIDS and WHO, there are close to 39.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world and though it will be a while before an imminent cure is likely, Dr Indrani Sarkar’s findings certainly hold out hope for the millions who are battling the disease across the globe.

After another fabulous couple weeks in Costa Rica, I’ve returned to the Big Apple for about four months. On the goodwill of some wonderful people, I’m living between Cobble Hill and Windsor Terrace, and back at two fabulous web/human rights jobs I had in the spring. I do have one ridiculously swollen knee after flying off a razor scooter on Union Street (on my way to the coop where I promptly iced with organic frozen peas), but otherwise, life is very good.

Been a while, again. I’m actually spending the longest time away from my laptop yet…we’ve encountered a surprising amount of wiFi zones, but backpacking isn’t especially conducive to carrying my mac around.

So…earlier this year I cashed in some frequent flyer miles, and I flew into Costa Rica on the 7th of August. Met up with Smith friend J, and spent the evening decompressing in San Jose. Just barely caught an early bus the next morning to the Bocas del Toro region of Panama, and archipelago on the Caribbean coast. I’d been there, about five years ago, and had coded it as the site of my favorite beaches in the region, just stunning. And it definitely lived up to my memories.

Since I was traveling without a camera, here’s a pic from the Panama Contact Realty’s website:

One bus, a taxi, and two boats later, our first four nights were spent in a German-owned, over-water guesthouse on Isla Bastimentos, about a ten minute boat ride from (and a much quieter option than) Bocas town. As with most time spent down here, we did have two rainy days to contend with, but I passed them happily in a hammock under thatched-roof out over the dock. I finally got around to reading the last Harry Potter, and generally enjoyed reigning my pace way in after all the running around I’ve done of the last few weeks.

It took us a while to get our beach-groove on, but our third day there, we managed to see dolphins, snorkel some, and find an excellent beach at which we managed to spend the rest of the dry portions of the week, La Playa Rana Roja or ‘Red Frog Beach.’ The swimming was just perfect, with soft sand and warm, super-clear water. And it was incredibly picturesque, as I also tend to like my beaches, lined with shady trees but not too many people.

So as not to be tempted to romanticize the location entirely, here’s some more of the behind-the-scenes view. There are, of course, the various issues and manifestations of (my) privilege that I’m forever confronting and negotiating in my travels in Latin America. What perhaps struck me most this past week, however, had to do with environmental protection, or a lack thereof. At the over-water hostel that I liked so much, I first noticed that if you looked down the sink, it appeared to be draining straight into the water. And then it also became apparent that every time we flushed our toilet, that was draining into the bay as well. It’s amazing what a visceral reaction I have, thinking about this…shortly thereafter I had a discussion with the woman who owns the guesthouse, who informed me that nowhere on the archipelago do they have any infrastructure for sewage. Needless to say, I didn’t do any swimming in that area, or anywhere else too inhabited. To give the region the benefit of a doubt, the coral and sea life in that area is still alive and kicking, substantially move vibrant than any reefs in Costa Rica, where runoff from decades of deforestation has slowly killed a good portion of marine life.

For our last two nights in Panama, we moved over to Bocas town, staying at Hotel Laguna. This I wouldn’t recommend, as due to them I’m currently battling (by repeated laundry etc) what I thought was a bedbug infestation but what I’m now guessing are fleas. But, all in all, I really enjoyed the week, zipping around in boats everywhere, surrounded by astounding shades of blue and green.

Anyway, I’m back in San Jose at the moment, as I’m attending Rebecca and Matt’s wedding tomorrow night. It was ridiculously refreshing to be at the Marriott hotel yesterday (though clearly I’m staying at the more economical Mi Casa Hostel) and delightful to see some of the Fendell family, who were an amazingly generous and helpful surrogate family to be the year I lived down here. Otherwise, J took off for the states this morning, and I’ll have a few days to chill by myself (in a yet undetermined location) after the wedding before I’m joined by two more fabulous friends for my last week here. So, provided I can kick the itchy, things are looking quite good.

Due to the fact that I’m not flying Lufthansa, I can’t actually post from here, but I can write and post later. I meant to update before I left but didn’t get around to it…I’m also bringing postcards home, unwritten. But, at the present moment, I’m writing partly to keep myself from going out of my mind, as the flights I’m on tonight have been some of the most terrifyingly and consistently turbulent of any I’ve been on, ever, 10-passenger planes aside. I’m nearly through a glass of (free) white wine, which will hopefully be refilled pronto. It’s the only thing that stops me from clenching all the muscles in my body for extended periods of time. Oh, anxiety, how I don’t miss you. [Afterthought: There was a horrible plane crash in Sao Paulo last night, that I wasn’t aware of until I landed at JFK to some concerned text messages.]

Anyway, I definitely enjoyed the last week and a half in Brazil. I function much better when I’m able to set my own schedule – not that I got a superhuman of stuff done, but I had a lot of quality time with some of my new favorite people. The primary highlight of the week was a jaunt to the beach near Cabo Frio, only 3 hours from Rio by bus ,where we stayed at a very nice pousada. Our intention was to miss the madness of the opening of the Pan American Games, which are going on in Rio right now, and we did succeed in finding peace and quiet, with a hotel nearly to ourselves. Our room had a killer deck with a hammock, all of 50 feet from the ocean. It was even stunning enough that I got up for the sunrise, two mornings, and we extended our stay a night longer than planned. And a good portion of the stress relief of being there was simply related to being out of Rio – it was refreshing to feel safe again.

Towards the beginning of the class we had a discussion about how much middle- and upper-class Rio residents perceive themselves as ‘virtual victims’ of crime. With the help of media reporting that tends to dwell on violence, it seems one of their primary concerns is illegally darkening their car windows so that people on the street can’t see in. I certainly admit to worrying like hell about some of the situations I was in over the last weeks…but the violence wasn’t just virtual. I got punched by a coked-up lady who lived in my building, and classmates got mugged and pick-pocketed on various occasions. One Brazilian friend confided that her 19-year-old brother just admitted to being robbed at gunpoint five times. It’s a tough city, such that I almost felt better getting on a plane than being there. And no one seems to have any confidence in the police force, from which many of the reported human rights violations come, they are notoriously brutal and corrupt. According to the same friend, “We don’t call the police, we just pray.” It’s bizarre to me to imagine that no one can be trusted to come to your assistance in times of emergency, and I can see how that knowledge would certainly change one’s world-view.

Anyhow, I also visited one of the NGO’s I’m going to be working with next year, Pela Vidda. Here’s their old website too, which has more information about their programming. The English-speaking president of the organization was traveling so I spoke in butchered Portuguese to the VP; I’ve really got to get my Portuguese in line over the next couple months, but I was happy to pick up some literature with vocabulary specific to HIV/AIDS. And I’ve bought myself a massive biography of Paulo Freire, so hopefully some dense reading will do me good.

Finally, I photographed the food market on our street on Thursday mornings. All the produce artfully arranged was really delightful – the spice vendor was another favorite.

So, sadly, happily, I’m home now, in New York, though I still have to do my final project for the Brazil class. I’ve still got a very busy summer ahead of me, with some US travel and some much-anticipated Central America time. I’ll keep y’all posted. Beijos.

These past three weeks went ridiculously fast.

This past Monday we went out to Complexo de Mare for a visit to Observatorio de Favelas, which tries to provide an alternative view of life the ‘informal city’ by media training and a news listserv. Like many other organizations we’ve visited, they have programming developed specifically with the aim of helping kids get out (and stay out) of drug gangs.

Tuesday we stepped a bit outside of media work per se in order to consider some important issues in Rio at the moment. We began our day in Lapa at Sao Martinho, the biggest NGO working with street kids in Rio. Then we went to have a chat with the delightful renowned Argentinian architect Jorge Mario Jáuregui, who has been working to integrate favelas into the official geography of Rio, making important improvements in infrastrusture (legal electricity, cable, water, community centers, etc) in the process. Until about 1994 or so, maps of Rio didn’t include the favelas (mostly started as squatter communities) but depicted the sites inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people as blank green space.

Wednesday we started the day at an NGO that does community radio. Brazil has some absurdly strict laws that limit the capacity of local radio, limiting their range to 1km and making all advertising illegal. But they still play a big role in local communities, as music and dance play such a big role in Brazilian culture.

We finished the day at an organization out in Bangu funded by the Dutch foundation IBISS. Some very high energy kids who are learning to drum put on a concert for us which was really quite awesome. And then we had a walk around the community to see some of the other stuff going on, from soccer to a guitar workshop to a crafts studio. The director of IBISS gave a pretty informative talk on the rest of the stuff they’re working on, from helping to integrate disabled children into society to, of all things, leprosy. Apparently Brazil has the second highest number of cases of leprosy in the world.

Thursday saw us back at VivoRio for a chance to talk to their director and co-founder Rubem Cesar Fernandes, a very dynamic guy. Googling him after the fact, I’m even more impressed…our prof Peter said it’s rare that anyone gets an hour of his time. Rubem was very warm and sharp and committed, and he provided us with a tremendous historical perspective that we hadn’t quite achieved in the rest of the class sessions. He spoke about the importance of doing things that are considered naive, such as tomorrow’s pre-Pan-Am-games walk through Gavea (a rich area), Rocinha (a favela) and Sao Conrado (another rich area) to demonstrate that the borders of these communities can be crossed easily and by anyone. He’s also been doing a lot of work in Haiti as well, on small arms disarmament and community development/renewal, at the invitation of the UN. I hope the UN invites me to help them out someday, lol.

In the afternoon, we visited an organization called ‘Fio da Alma,’ a group of women (and trans-folk) doing sex work who have become peer health educators, lobbyists, and activists. Although prostitution is legal in Brazil, these woman face a lot of discrimination (seems there are a couple headlines every week about sex workers getting beaten up) but they are working to boost their own morale, self-care, and public image. The women were a lot of fun, I’ll likely get back in touch with some of them next year.

Yesterday, we had yet another inspiring chat with Andre Porto, the head of VivaRio’s Religion & Peace campaign. It was particularly interesting to hear what Andre had to say about the willingness of most religious institutions in Brazil to work for social change; it is his goal to harness the progressive elements of the major churches to disseminate info on human rights, largely about violence and its affect on children. Was interesting and definitely something I’ll have to feel out/think about some more.

We wrapped up the class with a group chat and a walk to the top of the community Babilonia. My dislike for hiking aside (especially hiking in the dark, really), it was totally worth it - this is the spot where the first ‘Black Orpheus’ movie was filmed in the 50’s. The views were incredible, again among the most stunning I’ve seen. And I actually took pictures!

Had our class farewell party at a great samba club last night, was a good time. Today I’ve spent a good chunk of my day decompressing in the hammock, and I’m going to the Live Earth concert tonight - which I can hear out my window already, just started. I’m planning to stroll over there in time for MV Bill and O Rappa, and maybe hang around for the American headliners, we’ll see. And then I have a week and a half left in Rio (for now).

I’m actually mentioned on the front of New School’s Media Studies page. w00t.

That and I just got the info on my Fulbright stipend for next year - I might even be able to afford the lovely apartment I’m currently occupying in Rio!

A vida é boa.

Okay, let’s see…weekend was low-key and awesome, hung out largely in an artsy hill neighborhood called Santa Teresa. Even hung off the side of a streetcar on our way up on Sunday, was quite adventurous and the views were great. My apologies that these posts aren’t particularly illustrated…I haven’t been wandering around with a camera for various reasons.

Back in class on Monday, we started the day with a rare visit to the Brazil branch of the Ford Foundation. I’m definitely interested to learn more about the operations of their New York flagship office, but seems their name is on most things human-rights-related down here, so it was nice to learn a bit about their agenda.

In the afternoon we ran back to PUC for a presentation about Olhares de Morro. The guy who runs the organization is a French art photographeur who has organized various young photographers living within the favelas to sell their work and exhibit internationally. Vincent made it clear that he is not an ‘educator’ but a professional working among other professionals, which was a refreshing take on the youth media model. Their work was pretty impressive, too….we even stopped by their studio in Lapa on Wednesday afternoon.

Monday night saw the first of our sangria episodes, at a chill outdoor bar in Ipanema. We’ve got a fun crew of people around here, for sure.

Tuesday saw us back at VivaRio for a talk on ‘Digital Inclusion’ - it seems my initial research on web access in Brazil was optimistic at best (I should hopefully have better numbers sometime soon, the woman speaking offered to send us the presentation). She also spoke about the intensely concentrated media conglomerates in this country, and the amount of media outlets owned by politicians and their families…a recipe for badness, essentially. I’ve been watching the nightly TV news since that talk, and picking up another paper periodically.

Wednesday we spent the morning at the Museo do Indio for a neat exhibit on the Tisakisu group in the Amazon. It was their wish to use various media (video, audio, photo, print) to preserve elements of their culture in a time in which mainstream Brazilian TV is occupying the attention of their youth.

After sangria episode number two, that afternoon in the Cinelandia area (nothing quite like plastic tables in a plaza), we took our drunken posse to an excellent multilingual bookstore in Centro. We then had an opening that evening for a photo exhibit done by our professor. I had the long-awaited pleasure of meeting Graziela of Avaaz, as well, along with a very cool friend of hers from South Dakota.

Thursday morning we headed out to Cidade de Deus to visit a program run by CUFA. The presentation was unfortunately quite disjointed for an organization that sounds supercool (mission has to do with using hip-hop culture to build critical consciousness and self-esteem among youth) but I did come out with a much greater appreciation for grafitti in this country.

In the afternoon we were back at Nos do Cinema for a presentation on the youth (multi)media work being done there, which was superdynamic. The kids were a really fun and inspiring bunch. It was at this point also that I realized that a bunch of the ideas I’d had for my Fulbright project were just dead wrong (I’ll explain in a later entry)…but I think I’ve a much better idea of how to re-route the issues effectively, so hooray for that knowledge.

So much exciting stuff, still…

Today we spent the morning with CDI at their main office in Laranjeiras. I’d seen their CEO Rodrigo Baggio speak at NYU last fall; he’s amazing and very charismatic. Sadly we missed him today but we got a rundown on his NGO’s history: Twelve years ago, Rodrigo had a classic corporate breakdown, decided he was doing nothing with his life, and started gathering old donated computers, putting them in low-income communities in Rio, and started a fourth-month technical literacy program to go with them. Now, CDI has hundreds of educational ‘telecenters’ all over South America, even in South Africa, with offices in NYC and Boston to work on fundraising. We then visited their center in the Providencia neighborhood.

And this afternoon we had the good fortune of meeting the celebrated documentary filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho, talking with him, and screening his film Babilonia 2000. Coutinho was terribly sharp and entertaining, and I took a lot away from his discussion of the way he does documentaries.

Another great week.

Had a lovely trip last week on Brazil’s TAM Airlines from JFK to Rio, via Sao Paulo. I arrived to my lovely apartment in Copacabana, settled in, and promptly took a walk along the beach. Spent Sunday walking down to Ipanema and sitting on the rocks at Arpoador, mesmerized by sun and surf and surfers.

But alas, I’m here for more than just time on the beach! As mentioned previously, I’m taking a three week class on human rights and media (which marks the end my master’s degree). This trip is also quite special, as my time here is a sort of preview to the ten months I will spend here next year while working on my Fulbright project. Other than my general excitement and delight at everything from the strange delicious fruits to the music, the beach culture, and new Brazilian friends, I’m really enjoying feeling like my Portuguese is getting better every day.

So, class started on Monday at PUC, the private Jesuit university in Gavea, where our professor Peter Lucas has worked out of the law school’s division of human rights. In the morning we had a talk on the concept of citizenship in Brazil, along with a summary of the biggest human rights issues in Brazil today, basically, police violence, economic inequality, and slave labor in rural areas. After lunch at the first of the many “kilo” places we’ve been to this week, we had a group discussion about the class schedule and what to expect for the next few weeks.

Tuesday kicked off with a visit to Kabum!, an NGO that works to provide media training and career development for marginalized youth from in and around Rio. Their warehouse space was incredibly dynamic and the kids hanging around and in classes were a lot of fun. I may well hang around there next year, as the project I’m doing will be marketed to high schoolers, and I think it would do me good to understand and appreciate my audience a bit better.

The afternoon saw us back at an organization called VivaRio, the largest media NGO in the city, with which our professor has collaborated for many years. We spent a good part of the week at VivaRio, for talks and documentary screenings. Tuesday afternoon we spoke with two photographers from the VivaFavela web portal about the groundbreaking work they’ve done over the last couple years to “broaden the digital inclusion of [low-income] communities and to reduce social inequality.”

On Wednesday morning we actually took the train up to the massive Cristo statue at Corcovado, in part to get a better idea of the layout of the city and in part to enjoy the devastatingly beautiful view. I haven’t carried my camera with me this week for various reasons, but I wish I’d had it that day. In any event, I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and am really happy to be here. The weather has even been perfect, warm and sunny, every single day.

That afternoon saw us back at VivaRio for a talk on the year-old, tri-lingual portal ComunidadSegura. This was definitely one of the highlights of the week for me, as I got to bond with the presenters as a tech geek (the back-end of the site is Drupal) and appreciate the fact that one woman had the job I’m looking to fill in 3-5 years or so, that of web researcher/editor, very similar to what I did as an intern this spring for both NCRCR and The Opportunity Agenda. I really enjoyed hearing about the development and daily functioning of their website, and it was reassuring to see that there are opporunties for work in my tiny little corner of interest.

Thursday morning (after a trip to the incredibly exciting weekly food market on our street) we heard from Mauricio Lissovsky about a small arms disarmament campaign he was involved with, along with our professor. Deaths by handgun are through the roof in Brazil. Mauricio spoke about the two sides of a media campaign leading up to a 2005 referendum to ban the sale of guns in Brazil, which was voted down despite the fact that 80% of Brazilians were in favor of it only weeks before the election. The Right’s argument that Brazilians should have the right to bear arms hit a nerve in a nation in which people don’t have a terrible amount of faith in the police, causing a landslide change in public opinion on the issue.

In the afternoon we screened a film by Daniela Broitman “My Brazil,” about the process in which she worked to obtain funding to help a group of community organizers in Rio get to the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Our professor is close friends with Daniela, and she came to speak with us, and actually brought along one of the organizers from the film, a tremendous energetic and charismatic woman named Gaucha. Daniela’s spoke about her desire to combine media production and social activism; given that she just won a Guggenheim fellowship, I’m sure she’ll be one of those people to watch over the next couple years.

That evening we got to screen ‘Estamira,’ the most talked-about documentary in Brazil this year. I don’t wish to spoil this as I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy if possible (should be released for sale within a few months) but the director Marcos Prado also came to speak with us about his work. We’ve had lots of really special opportunities this week.

Friday began with a trip to TV ROC on the edge of Rio’s largest favela, Rocinha. After a wildly exciting moto-taxi ride up the hill, we walked down through the community with some leaders from the local neighborhood association. I have a lot of mixed feelings about our walk through Rocinha, having walked by 4 or 5 young guys with machine guns, essentially performing their watchdog role for the local drug gangs. For an illustration of this dynamic, from afar, the best recommendation I can offer is that you get your hands on a copy of the TV mini-series ‘City of Men’ (available on Netflix). There is also a good deal of tension in Rio at the moment as the Pan American Games are going to be held here, 20 days away. I’ve heard various people allege that the police are doing their best of seal off the favelas while the city is mobbed with foreigners, and police raids of the favelas are generally quite brutal. I only bought the paper once this week, as I’ve been busy, but the front cover had a story about a shooting spree in a favela we’re supposed to be visiting this week or next, a fairly common occurrence these days. I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.

The only other thing that has disturbed me this weeking is seeing the public service announcements about Dengue Fever, an illness spread by mosquitos that I’d heard about back during my days in Costa Rica. I then learned that I’m only 3 or so degrees away from someone who died from it recently, in Rio itself (unless you’re in the Amazon, there isn’t much else you need to worry about here, yellow fever etc). So I’m walking around with my bugspray, and applying every evening that I’m outside (often) and just trying not to think about it other than that. I know the chances of getting dengue are super-low, and it kills an even smaller amount of people, but I still wish it weren’t an issue here, ’cause this is such a cool city and I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time here.

Today I have significantly less to report: I went to the beach for a while and have been hanging out and reading in our hammock (’Doing Documentary Work’ by Robert Coles). There are, of course, various issues I’d love to talk about (racial dynamics here, issues od gender and sexuality in Brazil, etc) but I’m about to head out to a festival with some friends. So…more soon.

First, I’m ever so slowly jumping on the Google Calendar bandwagon.

Next, New York Cares is having a Happy Hour this week. Should be a great time.

In more serious news, Brazil gets kudos for a recent decision on its HIV drug policy.

Finally, the Brazilian Fulbright commission has found it in their hearts to give me a grant. So I’ll be there working on a pretty ambitious mutlimedia human rights education curriculum on HIV/AIDS, from March to December 2008. This is incredibly exciting.

If anyone would like to employ me in the meantime, feel free to drop a line!

Yet again I’ve found myself unable to post with much regularity, but I’m still emailing myself tidbits that I think are worthy of mention. There has been some interesting media work/commentary on immigration over the last few weeks, such as this onion video and a funny blog post about a newly released book (that is somewhat less funny). And there was lots of excitement this year surrounding the April 1st opening of the H-1B visa numbers; a good friend who is still in immigration law worked tremendously hard over the last couple weeks in order to ensure that all her applications were received by the USCIS on the first possible day. And don’t quote me on this, but I think she said that 130,000 applications were received (for the 65,000 or so slots) on the first two days? That’s intense.

In other news, I’ve been spending a good deal of time with a smart and savvy photographer, Ida. A fellow workaholic, full of energy, she’s got a ton of interesting projects in the works, from documenting fair trade cooperatives (coffee in Guatemala, tea in India) to punk rock shows. She’ll be taking the Human Rights and Media course with me this summer, in Brazil. We like her.