Stem Cells to Kill HIV?

It may sound a little far fetched,  but  according to an announcement last Monday, 7th December, researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles, have found that stem cells can be engineered to kill HIV !

“We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells,”  says the  lead investigator Scott Kitchen, whose assistant professor of medicine in the department of hematology and oncology at the Devid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA,   he added  ”These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors.”

This is another step forward, coming the just a week or so after the world wore red for World Aids Day on 1st December.  Even social networking sites FaceBook and Twitter went #red to mark the day that saw millions around the world raise the public conscious to a killer that just wont go away.

The UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown,  released a video on YouTube via the UK’s WorldAidsDay organisation to show support for activists tackling HIV.

We’ve come so far,  we have so far yet to go!