While people infected with AIDs can still go on to lead relatively long lives, at least longer than back in the day, the fact of the matter is that their bodies are still riddled with the disease. Obviously, a completely cure would be ideal, but science and modern medicine have yet to get to that point.
However, it seems that we are making some good progress, at least according to recent work done by scientists who have successfully removed HIV from the DNA of nine living mice. This is thanks to the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology and a treatment process known as LASER ART, where scientists at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center claim to have successfully removed the disease from a group of mice.
According to study co-author Dr. Kamel Khalili, “We think this study is a major breakthrough because it for the first time demonstrates after 40 years of the AIDS epidemic that the HIV disease is a curable disease.” How this works is first they used LASER ART to help reduce the growth of HIV in the subject, and then they used CRISPR to “cut” out any DNA that still had already integrated with the HIV.
Based on their findings, the virus did not return in nine of the 21 mice that they had tested it out on. With this success, there are plans to eventually start testing it out on primates, so don’t expect to see this cure made available to humans any time soon.