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.

In the years before that discovery, Crohn’s boyfriend and many of his friends had died of AIDS. But despite being sexually active with men infected with HIV, Crohn himself never got sick. The reason, researchers found, was that Crohn had a mutation in a gene called CCR5, which effectively blocks HIV from entering immune cells.

In the decades since, that genetic mutation — known as delta 32 — has been of particular interest to researchers studying HIV. It’s also the same mutation that the Chinese scientist He Jiankui tried to replicate when he shocked the scientific community last year by using CRISPR to edit the genes of human embryos. The twin girls who were later born were the first children whose DNA had been purposefully edited.

Now, a handful of research teams are trying to recreate the rare protective mutation in HIV patients in hopes of curing the virus. One biotech company, Maryland-based American Gene Technologies, plans…