SCIENTISTS | HIV CURE | MWESIGWA

KAMPALA - Ugandan scientists involved in HIV cure research have embarked on new strategy to find medicine capable of eliminating the disease permanently.

Under the strategy code-named ‘Block-lock-excise/cut’, the scientists want to find a medicine that not only makes the virus sleep, but also kills it once and for all.

Dr Betty Mwesigwa, the deputy director of the Makerere University Walter Reed Project (MUWRP), said her organisation will do the research under the five-year HOPE Collaboratory Network project funded by the National Health Institute of the US. 

Ten different research teams will be working on this project across the globe, with MUWRP being the only one in Africa so far.

Dr Mwesigwa said in the course of their research, they will encourage people living with HIV to continue taking anti-retroviral drugs that normally send the virus to sleep in the body. 

It is in the sleeping stage that they want to find technology that can identify, block and kill the virus permanently, hence the cure.

“We shall encourage patients to take ARVs so that they send the virus to sleep. It in the sleep that we shall seek to block and eliminate it completely. The trials, will first be done in animals before being introduced to humans. 

What we need now is the community to walk with us in this. Scientists can do wonderful things, but when people reject them, they become useless,” Mwesigwa said, during a media science Café organised by the Health Journalists Network in Uganda (HEJNU) on Thursday.

Currently, ARVs are only able to make HIV sleep in the human body without replicating.

Globally, the search for an HIV cure has been complicated by the fact the virus has very many mutations and keeps replicating rapidly.

“The problem with HIV is that it is very clever and mutates very fast. Medication might work on strain A and fail on strain B. But scientists are trying out different strategies.,” Mwesigwa said.

Among the strategies that have been developed to cure HIV is the method where stem cells from the bone marrow of people who are HIV resistant were introduced in the body of patients, leading to cure. Berlin, London and New York cities had a patient each cured of HIV, but the method is too complex and expensive for a mass rollout. 

The other method that is in advanced stages of trial is the immunotherapy, which aims to achieve a vaccine. MUWRP played a big part in the research on the HIV vaccine that is being tried out in the US and South Africa.

Cure needed now 

Moses Nsubuga aka Super Charger, who has lived with HIV for three decades, said he is desperate for the news of an HIV cure.

“I have lived with HIV since 1994 because of ARVs. The fact is that these ARVs are chemicals that always end up in my liver. 

The concern is, can my liver handle the chemicals from ARVs for the next 50 years? I’m approaching 50, but I want to live for 50 more years. I want to take a break from swallowing ARVs every day,” he said.

Nsubuga said people living with HIV are desperate for a cure because of the stigma they suffer and the fear of what can happen in case donors stop funding HIV treatment in Africa.

Statistics 

According to the World Health Organisation statistics, 37.7 million people in the world are living with HIV. 

One-and-a-half million of these are in Uganda and 250,000 are children. Over 90% of those living with HIV in Uganda are on treatment. 

The treatment is mainly funded by the US government through President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS in Africa (PEPFAR), Global Fund and other donors.