Science is “closer than ever” to finding a cure for HIV, and researchers and Harvard and MIT are at the forefront of knocking out the virus once and for all.

Reports LGBTQ Nation:

While now-common antiviral drugs (AVRs) knock back levels of HIV in both blood and tissues, they don’t overcome one major obstacle for an HIV cure: The stubborn “reservoirs” of cells that harbor dormant viral DNA in the body. When people stop taking the drugs, the virus almost always resurges within weeks.

In two independent studies at the University of California at San Francisco and the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard zeroed in on a class of white blood cells known as memory T cells, studded with CD8 receptors, structures on the cellular surface that are essential to immune defense.

Both studies found that precursors to these “killer T cells” are strongly tied to long-term control of HIV after treatment was stopped in some study participants. The precursors have a stem cell–like quality, and they more readily made copies of themselves when the virus started to return.

Stimulating the production of these “stemmy” CD8 cells “might be the key to getting control [over HIV] in more than the small percentage of people who are currently achieving it,” the Ragon Institute’s David Collins told Science magazine.

Steve Deeks, co-leader of the UCSF study, said those cells “may be the magical biomarker we need for a cure.”

Read the complete LGBTQ Nation story here.

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