CRISPR has been making a lot of noise recently, from gene-edited babies and now with the elimination of HIV. But wait, this is just the first time that HIV has been cured in mice so more research and trials need to be done to assess its feasibility for use and whether it will be effective on humans.
So far HIV can be treated with antiretroviral therapy (ART), which suppresses the virus from replicating, but is currently uncurable. Thus, the urgent need for finding a cure.
In an exciting turn of events, the team of scientists was able to cure mice of HIV by using a combination of CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, and LASER ART, a therapeutic treatment that slows down the replication of the virus for longer periods of time.
For more details on how the scientists administered the test, check out the article on Interesting Engineering.
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