A Cure for an Incurable Disease: This Method Sparks Hope

Stem cell technology has given hope to scientists around the world that HIV, a disease long thought to be incurable, now has a cure in sight.

40 years ago, the HIV virus was first identified. However, the American Food and Drug Administration only approved the first regenerative medicine trials in the United States a few years back — and now scientists are seeing a promising future for HIV-positive patients, thanks to the use of stem cell technology. 

“I think it absolutely offers a lot of hope for a functional cure,” says Andrew Caldwell, who is a patient in the clinical trails after being diagnosed with HIV eight years ago. A functional cure is one where the virus remains in your body but it has no consequences on your health, as the cells that the HIV would normally infect have been made to be resistant. Stem cells are naturally produced in the body by bone marrow, and stem cell treatments are simply a tweaking of the make-up of these cells, allowing them to better resist and fight off diseases such as HIV. 

An estimated 36.3 million people have died from AIDS-related complications – and this regenerative medicine method, though still in clinical trials, has sparked hope to the world at large that HIV may eventually be curable on a wide scale.