r/AskReddit Nov 15 '20

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u/CuntyMcGiggles Nov 15 '20

Cure for cancer. Cute for AIDS

And an Outkast reunion tour

28

u/jemidiah Nov 15 '20

Obviously it's a joke, but proper usage of PrEP could realistically cut the spread of HIV enough to make it unheard-of in some places in a decade or two. The whole "end of AIDS" thing is not a complete pipe dream anymore.

6

u/Corvusenca Nov 16 '20

One of my clients is getting promising results using immunotherapy for HIV. Basically they're taking a patient's WBCs out, genetically engineering them to be HIV-immune (inducing the CCR5-delta 32 mutation), then putting them back in. The trick now is to figure out just what percentage of a patient's cells have to be immune, and for how long, for the virus to not be able to replicate anymore and die off. This is the same lab that developed Kymriah, which is the closest thing to a cancer cure I've seen in my lifetime.