Gene Editing Tool Can Write HIV Out of the Picture

June 10, 2014

(New Scientist) – Take a hot new method that’s opened up a new era of genetic engineering, apply it to the wonder stem cells that in 2012 won their discoverer a Nobel prize, and you might just have a tool to cure HIV infection. That’s the hope of researchers led by Yuet Kan of the University of California, San Francisco – and they have proved the basic principle, altering the genome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to give them a rare natural mutation that allows some people to resist HIV.