What is HIV cure?
Antiretroviral therapies (ART) allow the control of HIV by stopping the replication of the virus. This makes the HIV viral load undetectable in people living with HIV, which means that the virus is also untransmissible. ART needs to be constantly taken because it does not eliminate the virus. When someone living with HIV stops taking their ART medication, the viral load usually comes back. A cure aims to control HIV in the absence of ART. HIV cure-related research can be broadly categorized into one of two categories, based on the overall goal of the strategy:
Eradication or complete elimination: This type of cure refers to getting rid of all HIV from all locations in the body. This also called a “complete cure” or “sterilizing cure.”
Durable antiretroviral-free control: This refers to a cure that results in HIV still being in the body, but it is not active and cannot affect one’s health or be passed to other people. This is also called a “functional cure.“ Most researchers believe this approach is more likely to be achieved than a complete cure. Sometimes people refer to this as HIV remission. Remission means that HIV is not active in the body; there is no guarantee of lifelong control of the virus, and it suggests the need for continued monitoring to ensure that levels of the virus do not increase again many years later.
To this date, 10 people have acheived a durable ART-free control of HIV. The approach requires a complete immunosupression and a bone marrow transplant, and yield a very low sucess rate.
Why do we need an HIV cure?
Even if ART allows people living with HIV to have a life expectancy similar to people not living with HIV, many obstacle remains:
Economic burden
Toxicity of ART
Stigmatization
Inflammation and comorbidities
Criminalization
Access to ART
HIV
The role of reservoirs
An HIV reservoir refers to a collection of inactive, “resting,” or latent HIV-infected CD4 T cells, which are a type of immune cell. It is where HIV is "hidden" during ART and the cause of HIV persistence and rebound.
These reservoirs can be found throughout the body, including in the gut, lymphoid tissue, blood, brain, genital tract, and bone marrow. The HIV-infected cells in these reservoirs continue to copy themselves, expanding the reservoir while hiding from the immune system and ART. They also have specific mechanisms in place to escape the immune system and persist over time. To achieve a cure, we need to target the reservoirs. Our research approach is structured around three complementary themes:
Active HIV reservoir in tissues and viral rebound
(what does it
looks like?)
Persistence and immune escape of reservoirs
(why does it persist?)
Therapeutic interventions
(how do we
control it?)
HIV cure research explained
CanCURE's Chair, Nicolas Chomont, at the pre-CROI 2026 conference community workshop
Community breakfast club on HIV cure research at CROI 2026
CanCURE was pleased to participate in the organization of the pre-conference Trajectories Towards a Cure for HIV: Research and Priorities, held on July 28 2022 in satellite of the International AIDS Society conference. It featured scientists from around the world, as well as patients, partners and stakeholders in the field.
Additionnal ressources
Different approaches to HIV cure research
This article from CATIE outlines the main approaches to HIV cure researchs, highlighting how researchers are working to reduce or eliminate the viral reservoir in order to enable control of HIV without continuous antiretroviral therapy. CATIE is a Canadian organization dedicated to providing reliable and accessible information on HIV and hepatitis C, supporting service providers, policymakers, and communities with resources grounded in research and lived experience.
HIV Cure & Immunotherapies Approaches: a brief overview
The CIHR Pan-Canadian Network for HIV & STBBI Clinical Trials Research (CTN) has put in place, with the our community liaison, a website to offer information about different clinical trials, treatment guidelines, and a directory of different Cure HIV research groups.
New tool to understand HIV research
In an effort to disseminate knowledge from latest HIV research, Darien Taylor and Craig McClure prepared a summary of the HIV cure research symposium held during the 2017 IAS conference. The document, entitled The road towards HIV Cure, is using plain language and is intended to provide knowledge to the community, as well as offeroffimportant notions to investigators new to the field.
Special thanks to Darien and Craig for producing this outstanding and useful document, and to Robert Reinhard, Delphine Planas, Ian Grubb and John McCullagh who reviewed the article.
ACCHO facts sheet
The African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario (ACCHO)has collaborated with CanCURE to develop an HIV Cure fact sheet. It is designed to assist African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) communities, service providers who work with them and other stakeholders in demystifying HIV Cure and increasing knowledge and awareness of the complexities of the search for a Cure.
