Temple Students Are Inching Closer to a Possible Cure for HIV

Temple University students and researchers have been studying a way to cure the deadly disease known as HIV. HIV, which can turn into AIDS, is highly dangerous. There is no official vaccine to prevent people from spreading catching it, but students at this university claim to be getting closer and closer everyday to a cure. 

They have been working on this for about five years and the new CRISPR technology, is helping them advance their research. CRISPR is… “If this research continues to show positive results, and is used to perform clinical trials in patients and shows positive results, this would be the first time that the HIV virus has been shown to be eliminated by technology such as this new CRISPR. This is truly groundbreaking research.” John Daly said. 

This sort of research has never been seen to be done before by anyone else, and Temple University’s work is groundbreaking in this research realm. “This is very, very novel work,” Tricia Burdo said. “No one has ever done an experiment like this in non human primates.” 

One of the major things that they want to do for this cure is make it easily accessible for everyone so that people can be safe and healthy. “Our strategy is to do a one-time injection,” Kamel Khalili said.  It's important to have something that you could give very easily. We were trying to basically develop a strategy which can be applied, with hospital without hospital, as long as there's a clinic, and you can inject with a needle, the compound, you should be able to use this technology that we have.” 

This breakthrough is, of course, most impactful for those currently suffering from HIV. As one anonymous HIV-positive person shared, the diagnosis can be quite crippling. “When being told I had the disease I became so depressed and took so much precaution when drinking after my family and such because I didn't want to spread it. Knowing that I cannot spread it though that sort of contact made me happy, but I still had and still do have heavy trust issues now when it comes to people that I think I know well.” 

Hearing the story from this person's perspective made me realize more than I thought I knew, having this conversation with this person made me see how serious this really is and how scared people are when they know they have been infected. When I told this person that a cure was being studied upon they explained how happy they would be if it became official. “If they ever come up with a cure I will be the first down there to take it, please give it to me. Gives me a lot less to worry about and one less pill to take.” 

Seeing that people are out here trying to change lives really shows how determined people are in the name of saving others; If you would like to keep up with the updates with the development of the cure you can go to the official Temple University site.