Quest to cure HIV
The Inaugural Global Scientific Strategy -Towards an HIV Cure was launched on Thursday ahead of the XIX International AIDS Conference amid renewed optimism from the world's leading HIV/AIDS scientists that the future prospects for finding an HIV cure are increasing.
In thirty-one years fight against HIV/AIDS, most of the effort has gone into treatment to keep the virus under control and development of vaccines to stop transmission. Finding a cure for HIV was a dare dream for decades. With some new developments and better understanding of the mysterious virus, the scientists are now desperately hoping for a cure of HIV/AIDS, what they believe is the only way to end epidemic. There are over 20 anti-HIV drugs available worldwide that can restore health, prolong life of the person living with HIV/AIDS and significantly reduce transmission of the virus to those not infected. However, drugs do not eradicate HIV and people are exposed to its potential toxic effects for life. Moreover, the expense to adhere to therapy for indefinite period is enormous specially in resource-poor setting. Developing an effective vaccine is another potential area to end epidemic. But success of this effort is still far away and has not yet shown very promising result. In these contexts, keeping the quest to cure HIV is crucial and the efforts need to be intensified to get a potential solution to end the epidemic and save money and resource for other emerging crisis. A number of recent advancements in proving an effective cure that shed light and renew optimism to peruse cure research. The case of Timothy Brown, the so-called "Berlin Patient", who received a stem-cell bone-marrow transplant in 2007 and is now considered to be cured of HIV has proved that a cure is at least possible. There is also a rare group of HIV infected people who appear to have naturally cured their own infection are being examined and researched extensively to find a clue for cure. The major challenge to cure is the latent HIV reservoirs — where HIV hides and persists in unreachable location that does not eradicated by drugs. Some recent researches have shown that drugs in combination can unmask latent virus that might allow clearance of infection and boost immune defense. Researches also revealed that benefit of early treatment that can successfully stop the need of drug after a certain period without viral rebound. A group of international experts convened by the International AIDS Society (IAS) have very recently developed a roadmap for research towards an HIV cure. It highlighted the need of more investment in cure research, establishment of large, multinational collaborations involving experts from multiple disciplines (basic and clinical scientists including those outside of the HIV arena), mentoring and supporting young researchers with out of box ideas and strong community support for advocacy.
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