Researchers are "overwhelmed" by a breakthrough in their quest for an HIV cure.

The study was conducted using cells donated by individuals living with HIV. While the findings offer significant promise, the journey from laboratory research to clinical application is still long. The approach would need to undergo successful trials in animal models, followed by rigorous safety studies in humans, which are expected to take years before any large-scale efficacy testing can begin.

“In biomedicine, many promising approaches unfortunately never make it to the clinic — that’s the reality,” said Dr. Cevaal. “I don’t want to paint an overly optimistic picture. But in the field of HIV cure research, we have never seen anything as promising as this in terms of our ability to expose the virus. That gives us real hope that this response could be replicated in animal models, and eventually in human patients.”

Dr. Michael Roche, co-senior author of the research and a professor at the University of Melbourne, said the discovery may have implications beyond HIV, noting that the targeted white blood cells are also involved in diseases such as cancer.

Dr. Jonathan Stoye, a retrovirologist and emeritus scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the study, described the Melbourne team’s approach as a significant improvement over previous methods for reactivating latent HIV. However, he emphasized the need for additional research to determine the most effective way to eliminate the virus once it’s reactivated.

“One major uncertainty remains,” Stoye noted. “Do we need to completely eliminate the entire latent reservoir, or is removing the majority enough? If just 10% survives, could that still reignite the infection? Only time will tell. Still, this study represents a major advance in the delivery of mRNA to blood cells for therapeutic use.”

However, not all experts agreed on the magnitude of the breakthrough. Professor Tomáš Hanke of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford challenged the notion that delivering RNA into white blood cells had been a significant technical hurdle. He cautioned that the idea of reaching every cell in the body harboring HIV through this method remains “merely a dream.”