For the first time since the 1980s AIDS epidemic began, researchers say they’ve taken an important step toward a possible cure for HIV, thanks to technologies developed in labs at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Temple University.
People living with HIV currently have to take drugs every day for the rest of their lives to keep the virus at bay.
But the virus continues to hide out in some tissues, its DNA tucked into that of its host, ready to flare again if the drugs are stopped.
Now researchers at UNMC and Temple University say they have eliminated HIV for the first time from the genomes of a small number of humanized mice using a combination of two different therapies.
“This is proof of concept that a cure of HIV is possible,” said Dr. Howard Gendelman, chairman of UNMC’s pharmacology and experimental neuroscience department and a senior investigator on the study.
