Antibody treatment surprisingly ‘cures’ monkeys of HIV-like infection

“Fascinating.” “A complete first.” “Striking.” “Too amazing to be real.” Those are some of the reactions researchers are having to a provocative, baffling monkey study suggesting that a monoclonal antibody used to treat inflammatory bowel disease in humans might lead to a “functional” cure of an infection with the AIDS virus. HIV therapies have improved to the point that combinations of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs routinely knock down the virus so effectively that standard tests cannot detect it in the blood. Researchers have long sought strategies that would allow people to stop taking their ARVs without the virus rebounding—a functional rather than complete cure, because patients would still harbor the virus, which integrates its genes into the DNA of a host’s cells. Yet save for a few notable exceptions, almost everyone who has stopped taking ARVs has seen the virus jump back to high levels a few weeks later. To keep the...