Recent Study: HIV Might Become Curable Virus

Researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple published a new study in Nature Communications magazine  yesterday which reveals the possibility of eliminating HIV (The human immunodeficiency viruses) from an infected animal’s genome.

The study is a step towards treating the virus from human's cells or at least it would suppress HIV replications.

Our study shows that treatment to suppress HIV replication and gene editing therapy, when given sequentially, can eliminate HIV from cells and organs of infected animals," said Kamel Khalili, director of the center for neurovirology and the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Center at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine.

The study offered many methods to treat HIV including, antiretroviral therapy (ARV) a laser treatment which keeps the virus at low activity levels. Researchers experimented the treatment on 29 mice; no trace of the virus was found in 30% of the animals.

Researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 technology along with the previous method to edit gene system to remove HIV DNA from genomes harboring the virus. However, using gene-editing therapy only is not effective to eliminate HIV.

"We wanted to see whether LASER ART could suppress HIV replication long enough for CRISPR-Cas9 to completely rid cells of viral DNA," Dr. Khalili explained.

"The big message of this work is that it takes both CRISPR-Cas9 and virus suppression through a method such as LASER ART, administered together, to produce a cure for HIV infection," he said.

We now have a clear path to move ahead to trials in non-human primates and possibly clinical trials in human patients within the year," he added.