Cure HIV/AIDS

Cure HIV/AIDS ranks 4th in the list of possible future applications of CRISPR. With an estimated total mortality count of almost 40 million to date, the HIV epidemic is easily one of the longest-running disease epidemics of all time. The pathogen, a retrovirus, has thus far proven resistant to all treatments. They don't even know how the HIV virus works, let alone the technique it employs to infect and spread among human cells.

It appears to be an incurable condition, while CRISPR offers one possibility for eradication. The method was utilized by a team of researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois to identify the genes related with HIV infection, which could someday be blocked to permanently minimize the virus's worst symptoms. The Crispr infusion comprises gene-editing agents that specifically target two areas of the HIV genome that are critical for viral replication. Because the virus can only multiply if it is completely intact, Crispr disturbs the process by removing sections of the genome. The goal is to one day eradicate the condition, which still affects more than 1.5 million people worldwide.