Could an Operation Warp Speed-style effort produce a cure for HIV within a year?
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Click here to read the Cover Story, "HIV cure research: Trying to eliminate a virus that ‘hides out’."
Operation Warp Speed, a federal effort supporting COVID-19 vaccine development, helped get multiple vaccines authorized for use in less than a year.
We asked Carlos del Rio, MD, Infectious Disease News Editorial Board Member, executive associate dean at Emory University School of Medicine, past chair of the HIV Medicine Association and president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, if a similar effort could produce a cure for HIV within a year.
Short answer: No. I think you have to realize that there is plenty — and I mean a lot — of money that has been invested in HIV research. It’s not like this is a disease that has not had funding. A significant amount of the NIH budget goes to HIV research, for example. So, there are already resources going to HIV research, and HIV vaccine research has received a significant portion of those resources. Sure, it is always nice to have more money, but this is more than a funding issue. This is a very complex scientific challenge.
Despite efforts to date, we have not been able to develop a vaccine for HIV, but a lot of the efforts and a lot of the research in HIV vaccine done at the NIH Vaccine Research Center and done by other people have actually significantly benefited COVID-19 vaccine development — the point there being that research in one area is not just limited to that area; it spills into other areas.
Would it be helpful to have an Operation Warp Speed-like effort to get a cure? It would be nice, but again, we don’t know what an HIV cure even looks like. We’re not going to be able to do bone marrow transplants for 30 million people living with HIV globally, if that’s what people think a cure is. So, we need to continue doing and funding the basic research to try to understand what it will take to get a cure, and that’s happening, and I think that needs to continue to receive the necessary funding.
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