The Gene Fix That Could Cure HIV

Antiretroviral drugs make HIV manageable, but gene therapies could eliminate the virus altogether — provided the treatments can be made safe and economical

A human T-cell (blue) under attack by HIV virus particles (yellow). Credit: Seth Pincus, Elizabeth Fischer and Austin Athman, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

In the mid-1990s, scientists made a curious but remarkable discovery: A man named Stephen Crohn seemed virtually immune to HIV.