The cure for the deadly disease, HIV, has been sought after for more than 30 years and we have finally come much closer to finding it.  Researchers have continuously been looking for a cure for the HIV virus in natural settings, but now that they have changed their views, it has greatly increased their chances of finding the cure.  Instead of looking in a natural setting, scientists have brought it back to laboratories and have created an artificial protein to help cure the disease.  It works by imitating the antibodies that are currently in our bodies and just allows them to detect the virus.  This new protein has been tested on four monkeys that were exposed to heavy doses of the HIV virus and they all tested negative for having the virus. “It’s perhaps a better construct than the antibodies we’ve been using, but it’s a matter of how it plays out in human trials,” Baltimore says. “I don’t think it’s easy to tell how that will happen.” Amazingly, this brand new artificial protein may see better results than its natural antibody counterparts.

The discovery of a new protein that can possibly cure HIV is important in history because it can prevent numerous deaths across the globe.  Currently, 1.1 million people have been killed from AIDS and 4.8 million are infected with HIV– 350,000 of whom were infected in just 2013 alone.  With a new protein that can cure this horrendous virus, it will allow us to save many more lives.  Also, this new method of using artificial antibodies instead of natural antibodies opens a new door to curing other diseases and viruses that also take millions of lives each year.

The researcher’s work in this experiment was brilliant;it has never been done and it has helped us to further expand our knowledge into finding the cure for HIV.  Having this technique to find new artificial antibodies is clearly important in the medical field since it revolutionizes modern medicine and doesn’t limit us to just using natural antibodies.  Clearly, this is a great sign that we are moving forward in medicine and that we will be able to soon fight many more diseases due to this new method of finding antibodies.