Hi all,
I agree with Chris_no, and believe that the cure will be a mix of technologies across many areas like phisics, like mecaniscs, like robotics, and maybe with chemicals too.

It is not a question just of time and money, but a question of human being interest in put focus on and work to do it.

Returning to original question of Werwin, I would like to keep the hope as many talk before in this thread and others. Hope is the propeler of many of great discoveries in science and day-by-day histories. Pick Edison light bulb nvention as an example...after thousand of temptatives (in a time that we don't have computers to make simulations, and with limitated materials to research and experiment) he got one filament that was adequated to solve the problem to keep light on without burn with the passage of amperes ...

There are a lot of other great examples in the science to be mentioned. So, Werwin, please keep your hope in great shape... and be aware that have million people around the world involved directly or indirectly in AIDS cures solutions.

Be safe. Be happy. Best Regards. Giba.

With desktop computer power rapidly increasing in the next few years researchers will be able to develop computer simulated models at the molecular level far more sophisicated than what exists today. This will allow researchers to rapidly identify and tailor new drugs that not only are effective but perhaps with fewer side effects. This perhaps will be what is going to happen over the next twenty years or so.

Nano technology in relation to biological applications is many many decades away. It is at the level of what the IC chip was in the late 1950's. Perhaps even before that when vacume tubes were the primary components of electronic devices.

I was referring to areas beyond drug delivery. I should have been more clear. Sorry about that. I was referring to intelligent micro-machines that actively seek out and repair/destroy specific biological targets. That was what I was referring to. Right now things are starting to take shape and are just progressing past the experimental phase into application. Right now in computer processor terminology things are at the 8086 phase. In a few decades we will be at the QX9650.

I have read a nice article on bbc about a study where they watched a patient taking the drugs for 7 years and looked to see if they were any closer to being cure just from the drugs. From what i hear the current set of drugs can cure you but only after a lifetime or so. The problem i keep hearing about is the inactive virus that hide dormant. So maybe a scientist could answer the question im about to ask. Is it possible if what i hear is correct about the sleeping virus that keep one infected. That a molecule being processed here on this project could cause the virus to awaken therefor come out into the open and lead to its death? Is there even any research going on about to awaken dormant virus's?

Hi werwin,

After several years of HAART (Highly-Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy), a patient's viral load (i.e., the number of HIV particles per unit volume of blood) can be decreased so much that it is undetectable. But you are completely correct about the catastrophic dormancy issue.

When you are infected with the chicken pox as a child, you generally will not develop the chicken pox again, because you have "immunologic memory" against the antigens that the chicken pox displays. Antigens are the surface-exposed parts of a foreign protein that are recognized by different antibodies. The B-lymphocytes and T-lymphocytes (i.e., B-cells and T-cells of your immune system) that happened to produce the right antibodies (i.e., the ones that stick well to the surface of the chicken pox virus), will go dormant after the initial chicken pox infection has been fought. These dormant lymphocytes can wait and hibernate for decades. When you are exposed to chicken pox decades later, those cells will "wake up" and start producing the anti-chicken pox antibodies again. Because these dormant cells are primed and ready to fight off the chicken pox virus, you are able to defeat it before it can take a foothold and make you sick.

Similarly, if one of these anti-chicken pox cells of the immunologic memory is infected with HIV, the HIV genes will be integrated into the human DNA (that's what the HIV integrase enzyme does). Thus, those viral genes are a permanent part of that infected cell's genetic material. If that immunologic memory cell is dormant, then it will not be expressing the HIV genes (i.e., it will not be using the info. in those genes to make the viral proteins).

We currently only have drugs that work against a few of the different viral proteins, but they have no effect whatsoever against the unexpressed, dormant viral genes. Thus, HAART has no effect against the HIV-infected cells of the immunologic memory that are currently dormant. Once a patient is exposed to chicken pox again, then those anti-chicken pox cells of the immunologic memory will wake up and start expressing their genes. While those cells are busy making the anti-chicken pox antibodies, they will also be forced into producing the different viral proteins (that are then used to make the viral particles that infect other cells in that patient). Thus, the HIV infection can hide in a dormant cell of the immunologic memory for many years, and it will only reappear once that immunologic memory cell wakes up. Only after the viral proteins are produced again can the current drugs have a chance of working.

I've heard about a few different projects that involve trying to make nanobots or clever biopharmaceuticals that will try to scan the genetic material in those dormant cells of the immunologic memory and either "wake up" or destroy the ones that are infected with HIV. But I think these projects are still closer to being science fiction than they are to being real medicines that we can start to use. If I hear of a break-through in this area, I'll let you know. But the issue of dormancy is amazingly tough to crack.

Our projects are focused on trying to develop new tools, new strategies, and, hopefully, new drugs that are still effective against the multi-drug-resistant mutants of HIV (i.e., things that will work against the proteins that the "super-bugs" of HIV make in order to evade the current drugs).

Thank you much for your interest and for your help,
Dr. Alex L. Perryman