Six years after Anele’s diagnosis, this program would see her enrolled in the first-ever clinical trial to attempt to cure HIV patients in Africa. In recent years other “cure trials” have explored newer approaches including gene editing and CAR T-cell therapy to enhance immune response, but they have yet to yield successful results. Yet, said Krista Dong , assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and FRESH’s clinical director, women are vastly underrepresented in cure trials. “To develop a cure intervention that has an impact, we have to make sure it is something that works in Africa,” Ndung’u said. There’s also growing interest in how future cure trials might include participants with co-infections common in sub-Saharan Africa, such as tuberculosis or hepatitis B.