Researchers have taken a giant leap in the search for an HIV cure by discovering a way to identify the virus even as it is camouflaged among other cells.

HIV spreads by invading and multiplying within white blood cells, which fight disease and infection. One of the main roadblocks in developing a cure has been finding a way to isolate and kill the virus without also killing white blood cells and harming the body’s immune system. 

Researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia have now cultivated a method to identify the virus among white blood cells, as demonstrated in a recent paper published in Nature Communications, isolating the virus for potential treatment. 

The technology involves mRNA — molecules isolated from DNA that can teach the body how to make a specific protein — which were also used in the COVID-19 vaccines. By introducing mRNA to white blood cells, it can force the cells to reveal the virus.

Using mRNA in this way was “previously thought impossible,” research fellow at the Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study Paula Cevaal told The Guardian, but the new development “could be a new pathway to an HIV cure.”

“In the field of biomedicine, many things eventually don’t make it into the clinic – that is the unfortunate truth; I don’t want to paint a prettier picture than what is the reality,” Cevaal said. “But in terms of specifically the field of HIV cure, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing, in terms of how well we are able to reveal this virus.

A cure is still years away, as Cevaal said it would still need to be tested on animals and then humans to see if it can be done safely on living beings before they can test whether or not a potential treatment would even work. However, she added that that “we’re very hopeful that we are also able to see this type of response in an animal, and that we could eventually do this in humans.”