"Kick and Kill"

The International AIDS Conference, this year in Melbourne, Australia, is one of the very few times that we can expect to read or hear about HIV in the regular media. For many years, the news was dominated by rising infections and mortality rates. However, the last few conferences have been dominated by new, promising results from studies that seem to confirm more and more that HIV is a manageable, chronic disease. Moreover, the "cure" word is also being tossed around quite often. For example, one recent study of six patients by Danish researchers seems to have taken a step towards addressing one of the more frustrating barriers towards curing HIV: the reservoirs of HIV that linger even after a person has an undetectable viral load. The researchers used the anti-cancer drug Romidepsin to activate the virus and bring it out of hiding. This potentially exposes the virus to the “killer” T-cells, which are responsible for attacking and eliminating pathogens in the blood stream but can’t detect the virus hidden in the CD4 cells. Unfortunately, in this study, even though the immune system detected the virus, it did not attack it. Nevertheless, the researchers are optimistic that in the next phase they can teach the immune system to recognize and clear these HIV cells. In closing, this study is indicative of the complexity of developing new therapies to combat or cure HIV. Yet, as we learn more about HIV, we get closer to that word, which decades ago seemed unrealistic, a cure.