World AIDS Day: No vaccine yet, but recent antibody discoveries spark hope

Dec. 1 has been World AIDS Day, and across the world, patients, activists, families and friends will be gathering, talking, celebrating and hoping. While 2012 has brought some measure of progress to the search for better treatments and vaccines that would eliminate the disease altogether, AIDS remains a challenging foe to both scientists and communities. The AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, first appeared in Africa in the 20th century and gained notoriety after it was first observed in the U.S. in 1981. Altogether, more than 60 million people have been infected with HIV, and nearly 20 million have died from AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. However, thanks to modern antiretroviral therapy, AIDS is no longer the absolute death sentence that it was before. Antiretroviral therapy, or ART, involves using several different drugs that attack the virus in different ways. Some drugs block HIV’s ability to enter host cells; others...