I have always wondered why HIV or HSV does not have a functional cure or vaccine. Are these viruses just impossible to cure with the modern medicine we have today?

Do you think in the near future there will be a cure for HIV or HSV?

Could crisper (gene editing) be a way for a functional cure?

Apologies in advance if this question is not allowed 

It has been very tough to find a functional cure for HSV as the immune system doesn't perceive this as a problem.  However, Jerome Kern at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute just published a paper showing basically a functional cure in the animal model using gene editing, so very exciting indeed!

And of course the question is allowed!  You can ask anything here.  We may not always have the answer but we try.

Terri Warren

Both viruses are biologically complex, as is the immune response to them. In contrast, most of the viruses for which there are effective vaccines -- e.g. influenza, measles, the Covid coronaviruses -- are biologically less complex and are inhibited by single components of the immune system, such as stimulating an antibody that kills or inhibits the virus. And it isn't only HSV and HIV that have so far resisted efforts at effective vaccine development. Epstein Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) are other often-dangerous herpes-group viruses for which vaccines have not yet been proved effective after decades of research.

Treatment is more effective, in that both HSV and HIV can be inhibited and their impact significantly reduced, even if they can't (yet) be cured. Maybe someday, it is hoped!

HHH, MD

Terri