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Scientists have managed to remove DNA of the HIV virus from living tissue for the first time in a breakthrough that could lead to an outright cure.

At the moment, treating the disease involves the use of drugs that suppress levels of the virus so the body’s immune system can cope.

Now researchers in the US have revealed they used gene-editing technology to remove DNA of the commonest HIV-1 strain from several organs of infected mice and rats.

In April, the same team reported that they had successfully eliminated the virus from human cells in the laboratory, but a paper in the journal Nature Gene Editing revealed they had managed to do the same thing in live animals for the first time.

The researchers’ team leader, Professor Kamel Khalili, of Temple University, said: “In a proof-of-concept study, we show[ed] that our gene-editing technology can be effectively delivered to many organs of two small animal models and excise large fragments of viral DNA from the host cell genome.”