Hope for HIV patients.
In 2014, a team of researchers in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University became the first to successfully eliminate the HIV-1 virus from cultured human cells. Fewer than two years later, the team has made further strides in its research by eliminating the virus from the genome of human T-cells using the specialized gene editing system they designed.
In a new study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers show that the method can both effectively and safely eliminate the virus from the DNA of human cells grown in culture.
How this research differs In previous work, the team—led by Kamel Khalili, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Temple—had demonstrated the ability of their technology to snip out HIV-1 DNA from normal human cells. The newest findings used that same technology to snip out the virus from latently and productively infected CD4+ T-cells, which host the virus in persons infected with HIV.
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