December 12, 2009 | Health Matters

Big step in battle against HIV

This week the University of California, Los Angeles, announced that in preliminary experiments with mice, stem cells could be engineered to kill HIV. The results were published Monday in the online journal PLoS ONE.

"We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells," lead investigator Scott Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the Devid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a release. "These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors."

The next step? Scientists will now have to see if they can get similar results within the human body, said co-author Jerome A. Zack.

It's early days for sure, but if successful this could be a big step in ending HIV for good.

Stem Cells Can Be Engineered to Kill HIV, Scientists Show [Science Daily]