This archive report was first published on 4 July 2019.
Published on July 4, 2019, a team of researchers, led by Dr. Benson Edagwa, an assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, has made a significant breakthrough in the quest for an HIV cure.
Using a combination of a modified ARV treatment and a powerful gene-editing technique, the researchers successfully eliminated the virus in living mice. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, involved 29 mice and found that 30% of the animals showed no trace of the virus.
According to Dr. Kamel Khalili, director of the Neurovirology and the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Centre at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine, 'This observation is the first step toward showing for the first time, to my knowledge, that HIV is a curable disease.'
The researchers used a medication called LASER ART, which is a modified version of traditional anti-HIV drugs. LASER ART is designed to release the drugs slowly over a long period of time, allowing them to target viral sanctuaries and maintain HIV replication at low levels for extended periods.
With an estimated 19.6 million people in East and Southern Africa living with HIV, the discovery of this new drug offers hope for a cure. The researchers are now planning to test the drug in human trials, with recruitment set to begin in the next three weeks.
