THE feline equivalent of HIV can infect primates. This doesn’t mean pet cats
with the virus are a danger to people, but the finding raises concerns about the
use of the virus in gene therapy, researchers in Canada say.
Two years ago, Christopher Power and his colleagues at the University of
Calgary showed that they could infect human cells with the feline
immunodeficiency virus (FIV). This time, they wanted to find out if the virus
could infect a living primate.
Power and his team drew blood from two macaques, infected the blood cells
with FIV and then re-injected them.…
