New monkey model for AIDS offers promise for medical research
Thursday, June 19, 2014 - 17:00
in Biology & Nature
HIV-1, the virus responsible for most cases of AIDS, is a very selective virus. It does not readily infect species other than its usual hosts – humans and chimpanzees. While this would qualify as good news for most mammals, for humans this fact has made the search for effective treatments and vaccines for AIDS that much more difficult; without an accurate animal model of the disease, researchers have had few options for clinical studies of the virus.