Scientists have proven that they can “snip” the HIV away from infected cells using state-of-the-art genetic editing technology.
Researchers at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University completely shut down the virus and eliminated it from the tissues of mice which had been transplanted with human immune cells and infected with HIV.
The experiment, led by Dr Wenhui Hu, follows on from the team’s previous research, in which they managed to delete HIV-1 from the genome of most tissues.
Dr Hu said: “We confirmed the data from our previous work and have improved the efficiency of our gene editing strategy. We also show that the strategy is effective in two additional mouse models, one representing acute infection in mouse cells, and the other representing chronic infection in human cells.”
The team is hoping to move to trials in primates, and eventually humans, which could be underway by 2020.
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2020
human trials could be underway as early as 2020, says the team behind the research.
