Fighting HIV with antibodies is like battling a forest fire with
garden hoses. They can slow the virus, but it vigorously copies
itself, making mutant versions that dodge this critical immune
response. Now, an experiment suggests that infusing mice with
rare, unusually potent antibodies produced in laboratories and
then combined into a cocktail might work as a treatment to
supplement or even replace antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. It's a
long way from mice to humans, and the cost of producing
therapeutic antibodies may be prohibitive. But the concept
intrigues many researchers. The most powerful antibodies against
HIV are isolated from untreated people who have failed to
control their HIV infection for many years. These so-called
broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) do little to help the
people who produce them, but their existence indicates that
mutations have created an increasingly diverse population of the
virus, which in turn has pushed the immune system to evolve a
response that is both more potent and w