In July 2015, researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France said that a French girl infected with HIV at birth was still in a “non-detectable” state 12 years after stopping medication, the first of its kind in the world. When she was 5 years old, her family discontinued treatment for unknown reasons, and she returned to the hospital a year later with “no viral load”. Therefore, doctors decided not to resume antiretroviral treatment, but to keep her under observation. Because HIV could be found in the cells but not in the plasma, the doctors did not consider the 18-year-old completely cured, but her physical condition showed a good response to treatment. The most likely reason for the girl’s prolonged viral remission is that she was treated with a combination of anti-retroviral drugs immediately after her infection. The sensational “Mississippi baby” was born in 2010 with HIV and was given three antiretroviral drugs, which were then stopped at 18 months after HIV was not detected in her bloodstream a month later. This case is a stark illustration of the dangers of a latent HIV reservoir. The combination of multiple antiretroviral drugs for AIDS treatment can effectively inhibit HIV DNA replication. However, because HIV is latent in the patient’s body as an inactive viral reservoir, current antiretroviral therapy can only delay the onset of the disease and cannot achieve a cure for AIDS. The latest research strategy from the University of California, Davis, is to “activate and then kill,” which is the key to curing AIDS, by first awakening the dormant HIV virus and then destroying it. They found that the FDA-approved dermatology drug PICATO contains an active ingredient, PEP005, that has the ability to activate latent HIV, and that the cellular signaling pathway through which PEP005 functions is pS643/S676-PKCδ/θ-IκBα/ε-NF-κB. activator JQ1 can synergize with PEP005 to activate HIV and increase the number of activated viruses. Picato is a clear, colorless gel. The main ingredient Ingenol Mebutate megastigmine methyl butenate is a cell death inducer. approved by FDA in January 2012 for topical treatment of solar keratosis. Ingenol Mebutate is a terpene active ingredient derived from the whole herb of Euphorbia grandis, Gansui or Qianjinzi, family Euphorbiaceae. Macrobidentanol can be used as a key intermediate in the synthesis of macrobidentanol methylbutenate Picato. Professor Sharon Lewin of the University of Melbourne said that this research finding will have a major positive impact in the field of treating AIDS and bring hope to AIDS patients. However, it is important to note that PEP005 has not yet been clinically tested in HIV patients, although it has been approved by the FDA as an anti-cancer drug. Moreover, this drug is only a topical drug, and if it is used to treat AIDS, it obviously needs to be taken orally or injected, which requires appropriate clinical studies. The research results were published in PLoS Pathogens on July 30.