Since the first reported cases in 1981, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected approximately 86 million people and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) complications.1 To address the epidemic, researchers all over the globe made concerted efforts to discover and design treatments. The most common treatment involves anti-retroviral therapy (ART), which attacks the virus and allows the immune system to recover. These treatments, while effective, are costly, must be administered long term, and are inaccessible to many people throughout the world. So, while HIV/AIDS no longer has to be deadly, death tolls remain significant and there is still no cure. Researchers are now looking for ways more effectively eliminate the virus long term using novel concepts and cutting edge methods.
HIV is a retrovirus that infects immune cells and inserts its DNA into the host genome, hijacking the host cell to ...
