Giving Compass' Take:

· As we approach World AIDS Day, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center touches on the number of lives impacted by this disease and emphasizes the importance of finding a cure. 

· How can donors support research efforts into finding a cure for AIDs? 

· Read more about progress made towards finding a cure for AIDS.

As people around the globe prepare to mark World AIDS Day this Sunday, nearly 38 million men, women and children are living with HIV/AIDS, a disease that still has no cure.

Thankfully, at least 24 million of them, in nations rich and poor, are keeping the AIDS virus at bay with anti-HIV drugs; but the pills must be taken daily, for a lifetime. If the pills are stopped, the infection springs right back.

However, with philanthropic and government support, scientists at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are working the long game. In addition to developing and testing HIV vaccines, they play a leading role in an expanding global effort to find a true cure, where the virus is stopped without the constant need for antiviral drugs.

That cure research — still a niche field in the universe of AIDS studies — relies on the notion that HIV can eventually be scrubbed out of the bodies of infected people by giving their blood cells protective genes, and that this gene therapycan one day be delivered to millions of people through just a shot in the arm.

On Oct. 23, these researchers received a significant vote of confidence when the National Institutes of Health and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationannounced a plan to each provide $100 million in grants that will support gene-based research on cures for HIV as well as sickle cell disease, both of which are especially prevalent in resource-poor regions of Africa.

Read the full article about HIV/AIDS by Sabin Russell at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.