Road to HIV cure; from Berlin to London and beyond

Abstract

Around 37 million people are living with HIV worldwide, with a million deaths due to HIV in 2017. While only ~60% of the infected population are receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART), by taking a combination of drugs suppressing different stage of the HIV lifecycle to lower the viral burden. While the treatment is very effective it does not eliminate HIV from the patient’s body and non-AIDS comorbidities (cardiovascular diseases and cancers) and unrelenting rate of new infections (around 2 million infections per year) have become a major concern and, thus new approaches are needed that no longer continuously suppress HIV but actually cure people.