Emerging Therapies in HIV Infection: Is the Immune Response the Answer?

After 35 years of research in HIV infection, resulting in the development of almost 30 disease-specific drugs, the infection has evolved, from a lethal disease, to a chronic state that in many cases does not compromise life expectancy of infected individuals. Despite this immense progress, a widespread mechanism of virus eradication has not yet been recorded, rendering individuals committed to combined drug regiments for life. As a result, these patients often face several difficulties that are associated with side effects, adhesion to therapy and/or emerging resistance of the virus to the applied regiment. On this regard, scientists have recently focused on manipulating responses of the hosts’ immune system, in order to control viral replication and eventually succeed in eliminating the virus in infected individuals. Research will verify the rationale of this syllogism, which according to the authors of this article, is the only approach that can permanently heal infected patients from HIV.