A LIVING microbicide reduces HIV-like infection in monkeys, and might one day provide women with long-lasting defence against the virus. Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues engineered naturally occurring vaginal bacteria to produce the anti-HIV protein cyanovirin-N. They applied a gel containing the bacteria to the vaginas of rhesus macaques before infecting them by the same route with a hybrid of SIV and HIV. The engineered bacteria cut the infection rate by 63 per cent (Mucosal Immunology, DOI: 10.1038/mi.2011.30).
