Study finds T-cells can kill HIV

It is possible to engineer human blood cells to kill cells infected with HIV, a new study has found.

Researchers from the UCLA Aids Institute carried out work on the issue.

The study, which is published in the latest issue of the PLoS One online journal, found that T-cells are able to recognise and kill cells that are infected with HIV.

However, these T-cells are not available in large enough quantities to remove HIV from a person's body completely.

Scott Kitchen, an assistant professor of medicine in David Geffen School of Medicine's hematology and oncology department at the UCLA Aids Institute, said: "We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells."

He added that the research will lay the foundation for further studies into these and the effect they can have on the virus.

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