The many facets of HIV cure research were discussed and debated this week in Boston at the Keystone-sponsored symposium Mechanisms of HIV Persistence: Implications for a Cure. As the name suggests, one of the main topics on the agenda here was how researchers can gain a handle on understanding the dormant pools of HIV-infected cells that are collectively referred to as the reservoir.

IAVI Report caught up with husband and wife team Robert and Janet Siliciano from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, at this week's Keystone Symposium to get their initial impressions of the meeting and their take on the status of HIV cure research.

It may be next to impossible to imagine a world without HIV, but it’s getting closer to one where HIV will be in remission, says French retrovirologist and Nobel Prize winner Francoise Barré-Sinoussi.

Persistence pays, so they say. But in the case of HIV, persistence is the main obstacle to finding a cure, which is why research is currently focused on determining how HIV establishes its hiding spots and how it can be roused and eliminated.

South African health minister Aaron Motsoaledi, hobbling with his foot in a boot, arrived this morning in Cape Town after flying overnight from a lung health congress in Barcelona.

Heading directly to the huge convention center here that this week was hosting the first-ever HIV R4P conference, a gathering of researchers and activists working on all HIV prevention efforts, Motsoaledi wasted no time in making connections. “We have the highest levels of HIV and tuberculosis co-infection in South Africa and indeed in Southern Africa,” he said. “They are two sides of the same coin.”