A 'kick and kill' strategy that forces the human immunodeficiency virus out of cells — leaving it vulnerable to injections of natural killer cells — offers hope of an HIV cure.

In laboratory tests on 10 mice the approach was found to eliminate the virus in 40 per cent of cases, a team from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) said.

 A 'kick and kill' strategy that forces the human immunodeficiency virus (pictured) out of cells — thereby making it vulnerable to existing antivirals — offers hope of an HIV cure.

UCLA researchers used a strategy which they dubbed 'kick and kill' to eliminate HIV in 40 per cent of mice studied.

The technique was first proposed back in 2017 and works by tricking the dormant virus in the infected cells to reveal itself using a compound called 'SUW133', so that it can be targeted and eliminated. .

The researchers then injected healthy natural killer cells along with the SUW133 that flushes HIV out of hiding, enabling them to completely clear HIV from 4 out of 10 infected mice. .

While this can suppress the virus to the extent that the host's viral load becomes both undetectable and untransmissible, HIV will still remain dormant in their system, hiding out in CD4+ T cells, which normally help coordinate immune responses.

The team's strategy — which they have dubbed 'kick and kill', and was first proposed back in 2017 — works by tricking the dormant virus in the infected cells to reveal itself using a compound called 'SUW133', so that it can be targeted and eliminated.

In a previous study, which looked at HIV-infected mice whose immune systems had been altered to match those of humans, the experts found treatment with both SUW133 and antiretrovirals killed up to 25 per cent of infected cells within 24 hours.

Looking for a more effective way to eliminate the infected cells, the researchers turned instead to so-called natural killer cells, which are produced by the body's immune system that, as their name suggests, can kill infected or tumour cells.

By injecting healthy natural killer cells along with the SUW133 that flushes HIV out of hiding, the team were able to completely clear HIV from 4 out of 10 infected mice.