Over the last two decades, treatments that change the disease from lethal to chronic have enabled many AIDS patients to live longer. However, there is still no permanent cure.

Engineering a patient’s blood cells to secrete anti-HIV antibodies could form the basis of a groundbreaking vaccine or one-shot treatment for the HIV virus that causes AIDS, according to a new international research study.

The new research, as described in the journal Nature, was led by molecular biologist Adi Barzel and PhD student Alessio Nehmad from Tel Aviv University’s school of neurobiology, biochemistry and biophysics in collaboration with Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and additional researchers from Israel and the United States.

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