Overall, the story of HIV is one of astounding success. But to declare victory, it will be necessary to develop a vaccine. The opening session of the 31st Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) 2024 looked back to the failures but also the advances in research, all the steps that over the years brought the basic science knowledge that could bring an HIV vaccine in the future. This year, the former director of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the NIAID Vaccine Research Center, Barney Graham, was named for the Bernard Field Lecture, where he presented “Modern vaccinology: a legacy of HIV research.”

On March 4, 2024, several groups of scientists discussed the challenges of investigating the effects of HIV in the central nervous system (CNS) at the oral abstract session on neuropathogenesis of HIV held during the 31st Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), in Denver. A cure for HIV will require eliminating the virus in all its reservoirs, those tissues where HIV remains latent but retains the capacity for reactivation and replication. However, despite antiretroviral therapy (ART), the virus could continue to replicate continuously at a low level in some reservoirs, including the CNS.

Fifteen years ago, at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), researchers announced that they had cured a patient – Timothy Ray Brown, initially known only as the Berlin Patient to preserve his privacy – of HIV through a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Now, as researchers are gathered in Seattle for CROI 2023, reports of another cured patient were published Feb. 20, 2023, in Nature Medicine. Ten years after receiving a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, and 4 years after stopping antiretroviral treatment (ART), a 53-year-old patient may have been cured of HIV infection.