Question: Is there going to be a cure for AIDS?

Matt Bilton answered on 19 Nov 2014:

The HIV virus that causes AIDS is a really tricky one. It’s got loads of ways to avoid the immune system – but one that makes it really dangerous is that it integrates its own DNA right into the DNA of the cells it infects. Some of those cells are then hijacked to make lots more virus.

The drugs we have for HIV are pretty good at stopping the viruses from being made. This means that the progress of AIDS can be halted and patients can live for a long time now with the drugs we have. But the drugs don’t actually get rid of the virus DNA that is hiding away in the DNA of the infected cells. This means that when the drugs we have are stopped, more virus starts getting made again. So even though the patient can be treated, patients cannot currently be cured.

In order to really cure someone, you would have to find a way to identify the cells with the HIV DNA hiding away inside, and then destroy them so that more HIV viruses aren’t made after the treatments are stopped. This is not easy, but there are people hard at work on it at the moment – even some of my colleagues in Oxford, and I know they believe a cure is possible. So I think it is impossible to say if there will ever be a real, permanent cure – but if it wasn’t possible then there wouldn’t be scientists working on it! HIV/AIDS still kills more people than any other single virus or bacteria though, despite the excellent treatments that exist so a cure would be really amazing. Hopefully we can get there!