Replies to post #100272 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

HCV is indeed easier to cure than HIV, but this is because HCV does not integrate into the host genome.

It isn't clear to me that the reason HIV is so hard to cure is just because it integrates into the host genome. Plenty of other viruses integrate into the host genome and get easily controlled by the immune system. I would thus suggest that what makes it hard to control is that it is controlling much of the immune system and/or hiding out (both of which HCV also does - albeit less effectively). Clearly it is easier for the immune system to control HCV than HIV - but it isn't clear what the method is to break HCV's resistance to the immune system permanently and whether DAA's will do it.