PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — For more than 40 years, researchers have been looking for a way to cure HIV. Now, that solution may finally be just around the corner.

Temple University researchers launched a clinical trial last month. The treatment removes HIV from infected cells using gene-editing technology, a therapy known as CRISPR.

“When you do this CRISPR cleavage, you basically cut the virus on two ends,” explained Dr. Tricia Burdo, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Inflammation at Temple’s School of Medicine.

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“You cut a really big piece out,” she said. “The body has this natural ability to repair its own DNA, so once you remove that HIV from the DNA, your DNA will then come back together and repair itself.”

That cut isn’t made with a knife or scissors, but rather with molecules and proteins that enter the body during an infusion, which takes about an hour and a half.

Dr. Kamel Kalili, director of Temple’s Center for Neurovirology and Gene Editing, said the trials were done with animals.

“The result of the intravenous inoculation of the CRISPR result in complete elimination of the virus from every single organ that we examined,” he said.

And just a few weeks after the infusion, the virus was gone.

Clinical trials on humans are ongoing.