Newer and Promising Drugs
When you're diagnosed with HIV, you start antiretroviral therapy (ART) as soon as possible. ART typically combines three HIV medicines from at least two different drug classes, taken as multiple pills — though many people now qualify for simpler one-pill or two-pill daily regimens.
But staying on track with daily medication isn't easy. Over time, you may develop resistance — meaning the virus changes and the drugs no longer keep it fully suppressed. The good news: the past couple of years have brought some of the biggest advances yet in HIV treatment and prevention.
Yeztugo: twice-a-year prevention
In 2025, the FDA approved lenacapavir under the brand name Yeztugo — not for treatment, but for HIV prevention (PrEP). It's the first long-acting option of its kind, requiring just two injections a year instead of a daily pill. The approval was based on Phase 3 trials showing dramatic reductions in new HIV infections, giving people at risk of HIV a dramatically simplified prevention option.
Idvynso: a new once-daily combination
In 2026, the FDA approved Idvynso, a daily pill combining doravirine and islatravir — an NRTTI (nucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitor) that blocks a protein HIV needs to replicate. It's a complete regimen on its own, with no need to pair it with other drugs, and is approved for people with no history of treatment failure on prior HIV therapies.
Bixlenvo: simplifying complex regimens
Also in 2026, the FDA approved Bixlenvo, combining bictegravir with lenacapavir (the same capsid inhibitor behind Yeztugo and Sunlenca) into a single daily pill. It's designed to replace existing treatment regimens for adults with HIV — including complex, multi-pill combinations some people have relied on for years due to drug resistance or tolerability issues.
HIV Vaccines
Researchers are developing a therapeutic HIV vaccine. Therapeutic vaccines treat a condition rather than prevent it. People who already have HIV would get this therapeutic vaccine to help strengthen their immune system’s response to the virus. The hope is that the vaccine alone would prevent HIV from progressing to AIDS without the need for ART.
So far, it’s been hard to develop an HIV vaccine. Most traditional vaccines use a dead or weakened form of a virus to prompt the body to make antibodies against it. But that method hasn’t worked with weakened HIV, and a live form of the virus is too dangerous to use.
But researchers may be making headway on a different type of vaccine. The HTI vaccine teaches immune cells called T cells to attack a specific part of the virus that allows it to make copies of itself. In one small study of 45 patients, 40 percent of those who got the vaccine were able to stay off of ART for 22 weeks.
Researchers are now studying the vaccine in combination with the experimental drug vesatolimod. This drug may enhance the body’s immune response to the vaccine, which could make it effective for more people or make its effects last longer.
Gene Editing
Gene editing could be another approach to HIV treatment. Gene editing technology changes an organism’s DNA. Studies of gene editing are underway in a range of genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and sickle cell disease. Now, researchers are trying to harness it against HIV.
Early experiments on animals suggest that a type of gene editing called CRISPR may disable a virus similar to HIV called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), found in animals such as monkeys. Very early human clinical trials began at the end of 2021. In the trials, researchers use CRISPR technology to cut out the HIV that wraps around the DNA in cells and makes it so difficult to treat.
The hope is that unlike ART, which you have to take for life, a one-time CRISPR treatment may cure the disease.
Testing HIV Treatments
A lot of research goes into HIV treatments to make sure, first, that they are safe and then that they work. Researchers ensure this through clinical trials. This allows them to answer many questions about the drugs.
Clinical trials happen in four phases:
- Phase I. A small group of people (less than 80) get the treatment to make sure it is safe and to identify the side effects.
- Phase II. Several hundred people receive the treatment as researchers continue to monitor the safety and start to see whether the drug works.
- Phase III. Several thousand people receive the treatment (usually between 1,000 and 3,000) to confirm it works, watch for side effects, and compare it to existing treatments. After this phase, the drugmaker can use the clinical trial results to apply for FDA approval of the drug.
- Phase IV. FDA continues to track recently approved drugs to make sure there aren’t any new problems now that more people are using them.
If an HIV treatment doesn't work for you, or you find your medication regimen hard to follow, talk to your doctor. There may be options to consider that are already available.
Additionally, you may be able to enroll in a clinical trial. To find one near you, use the search feature on clinicaltrials.gov. Sometimes, drug companies get permission from the FDA to make their experimental HIV drugs available to people who are not in the clinical trial. If there’s a drug that you are interested in but you can’t be part of the clinical trial, talk to your doctor to see if you qualify for an expanded access program.
