About this, The Bell writes, citing Bloomberg. The publication says that researchers have shown a method by which the immune system can independently suppress HIV.
The authors of the piece emphasize that this is not about a cure: for now, scientists are only talking about controlling the virus. At the same time, the results could form the basis of a therapy that in the future would only need to be carried out once in a lifetime.
Since 2020, the first group has administered a combination of a therapeutic vaccine and antibodies created in the laboratory to 10 patients. After standard drugs were discontinued, seven participants were able to control HIV for several months, and one of them for 18 months.
In the second study, 9 people had their own T cells taken, genetically reprogrammed, and returned to the body. Two participants kept the virus under control for a long time, and one of them for more than two years.
The third team spent 14 years sequentially vaccinating monkeys with a series of vaccines and step by step changing their immune response. As a result, the test subjects developed broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.
Separately, scientists continue to study the case of the so-called “Berlin patient” Timothy Ray Brown: in 2007–2008, to treat blood cancer, his own immune and blood-forming system was destroyed and replaced with donor stem cells. The donor had a rare mutation that prevents HIV from attaching to an immune cell, and the virus completely disappeared from Brown’s body.
Such a procedure remains extremely dangerous and makes sense only as a life-saving measure for leukemia; in other cases, doctors consider it more reasonable to continue antiretroviral therapy. Further work on similar directions is constrained by funding: in the United States, spending on promising medical research is being cut, and the fate of most programs is to be decided in 2027.
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