They need to find a way of paying scientists and doctors, as well as pharmaceutical companies who develop these things. So there is more incentive to go after them.
Perhaps companies who make something that is not patentable can receive tax breaks or something to allow them to continue the work. Whoever cures HIV officially, everyone buys 1 share of the company. Something. Right now a lot of work seems to get sidelined because the work is not patentable.
http://www.plospathogens.org/article...l.ppat.1003587
Stable integration of HIV proviral DNA into host cell chromosomes, a hallmark and essential feature of the retroviral life cycle, establishes the infection permanently. Current antiretroviral combination drug therapy cannot cure HIV infection. However, expressing an engineered HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR) site-specific recombinase (Tre), shown to excise integrated proviral DNA in vitro, may provide a novel and highly promising antiviral strategy. We report here the conditional expression of Tre-recombinase from an advanced lentiviral self-inactivation (SIN) vector in HIV-infected cells. We demonstrate faithful transgene expression, resulting in accurate provirus excision in the absence of cytopathic effects. Moreover, pronounced Tre-mediated antiviral effects are demonstrated in vivo, particularly in humanized Rag2−/−γc−/− mice engrafted with either Tre-transduced primary CD4+ T cells, or Tre-transduced CD34+ hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSC). Taken together, our data support the use of Tre-recombinase in novel therapy strategies aiming to provide a cure for HIV.