AIDS-HIV Cure: Study Finds Gene-Editing as Promising Cure for HIV

By Vianne Ilagan, Christian Post Contributor Friday, June 02, 2017

A recent study conducted in mice found a promising cure for HIV. Although more tests are required to see if the devastating immune disease can also be treated in humans, researchers believe that the success of the recent study that used mice as subjects was a significant step towards finding a cure for the disease.

According to the researchers, some of who came from Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh, they were able to "humanize" a few of the mice by giving them human immune cells. They also spotted successful proviral excision in the spleen, heart, lungs, colon and brain of the mice after a single intravenous injection of the gene-editing protein was administered to them.

In the journal titled "Molecular Therapy," the scientists said that while most apparent breakthroughs in animal models faced practical problems when applied to humans, the latest type of genome editing that they applied to the mice "provides a promising cure for HIV-1/AIDS."

"Here, we demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of excising the HIV-1 provirus in three different animal models. Excision of HIV-1 pro-viral DNA by [this method in a living animal] in solid tissues/organs can be achieved... [which is] a significant step toward human clinical trials," the researchers wrote in the journal.

According to them, this was the first study that showed that HIV-1 proviral DNA could be successfully removed from the host genome in pre-clinical animal models. However, they also noted that gene delivery efficiency is still one of the obstacles that they need to overcome in a living animal.

The researchers also revealed their plan to conduct the same test in primates in order to see the potential of the gene-editing process in curing HIV-infected humans. In doing this, they are going to choose an animal model whose HIV infection may induce disease the way it also does in humans.

Today, there are certain drugs available in the market to stop HIV from duplicating itself inside a patient's body. However, these medications are not capable of totally removing it.