The most advanced drugs for HIV suppress the virus, essentially rendering it a chronic disease — but none can cure the infection.
Now, a team of scientists has cleared HIV from infected mice using the CRISPR gene-editing tool in what may be the first time the virus has been eliminated from the genomes of living animals.
In a new report in Nature Communications, researchers described using a combination of long-acting anti-HIV drugs and CRISPR in mice to eliminate HIV in up to one-third of the infected animals in their study. The long-lasting drugs suppressed HIV replication, and then CRISPR was used to remove viral DNA fragments within infected cells and tissues.
