Episode 40 - HIV Cure Research: State of the Art and Navigating Presentations at CROI 2025 with Dr Joseph J. Eron, Jr

Episode 40 – HIV Cure Research: State of the Art and Navigating Presentations at CROI 2025 with Dr Joseph J. Eron, Jr

In this episode of Going anti-Viral, Dr Michael Saag speaks with Dr Joseph Eron, Professor of Medicine at University of North Carolina (UNC) about the topic of his upcoming presentation at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) 2025: HIV Cure Research: State of the Art and Navigating Presentations at CROI 2025. Dr Eron discusses the state of HIV cure research including a detailed discussion of why it has been so difficult to develop a cure for HIV. Dr Saag and Dr Eron discuss the difference between HIV cure and functional cure and provide a detailed overview of cure research efforts looking at blocking and locking HIV in human DNA. Dr Saag and Dr Eron also discuss the potential for “molecular scissors” (CRISPR-Cas9) to cure HIV. Finally, they provide an overview of cure research that will be presented at CROI, highlighting the plenary presentation by Dr Ole Søgaard at CROI on Monday March 10 entitled HIV Cure: A Translational Research Perspective. For more information about the topic of this episode, listen to an earlier episode of Going anti-Viral where Dr Saag discusses Vaccine Development with Dr Richard Koup, see links in the resources below.