A func­tion­al HIV cure? We have a long way to go, but Hong Kong in­ves­ti­ga­tors find a spot­light for their pre­clin­i­cal an­ti­body

A group of HIV in­ves­ti­ga­tors in Hong Kong is get­ting star treat­ment to­day. 

Reuters is high­light­ing the pre­clin­i­cal re­search of Pro­fes­sor Chen Zhi­wei at Hong Kong Uni­ver­si­ty’s AIDS In­sti­tute, who un­veiled a mouse study last April along­side claims that his team had found a bi-spe­cif­ic an­ti­body that could work as a “func­tion­al cure.”

Let’s set aside for a mo­ment the idea that you can start claim­ing you’ve found a cure for any­thing when it’s on­ly worked so far in mouse mod­els. The pro­fes­sor and his col­leagues say that their bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body ev­i­dent­ly works against all sub­types of HIV-1, mak­ing it uni­ver­sal­ly ap­plic­a­ble. In ad­di­tion, he says they have an­i­mal da­ta to sup­port that the an­ti­body they’ve de­vel­oped al­so goes af­ter the reser­voir of la­tent virus that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of an­ti­retro­vi­rals can’t reach.

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