Giving Compass' Take:

• The Guardian takes a look at the medical research landscape as it enters a new era to find ways to eradicate HIV from infected populations. 

• Have we become too complacent when it comes to searching for breakthroughs in the HIV/AIDS field? In what ways can donors support bolder ideas?

• Here's more on why we need robust investment in this fight.

More than 50 years after it jumped the species barrier and became one of the most devastating viruses to affect mankind, HIV remains a stubborn adversary. Treatment has improved dramatically over the past 20 years, but people who are infected will remain so for the rest of their lives, and must take one pill daily — at one time it was a cocktail of 30.

But now scientists are beginning to ask if the biggest breakthrough — an out-and-out cure for the tens of millions who have contracted the virus — could be in sight.

The excitement lies in research that is having some success in drawing the virus out of a latent stage (in which it can lie undetected for long periods) so that it could be destroyed.

“The last couple of years have been very exciting on this front,” said Satish Pillai, an associate professor in HIV research from the University of California San Francisco. “We’re now attempting find the holy grail of HIV research.”

Read the full article on finding a cure for AIDS by Jack Flanagan at The Guardian.