Thanks to Eric for putting me on to this…
Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/25061.aspx
At first I was quite skeptical when I started to read this. There are LOTS of things that show huge promise in the test tube that totally fall on their face in clinical trials, but the base of this product is already approved for human use (as a blood analogue, though it failed to meet expectations (sort of like how Viagra started as a heart drug)). Also, getting something approved for topical (or intra-vaginal as suggested by the author) use should be orders of magnitude less problematic and if you can prevent people from getting infected then you don’t need to cure them (Duh!). Though the authors talk about no worries about resistance, I think that is off base. Since the product works based on physical size, all the virus has to do (‘do’ in an anthropomorphic sense, evolution is just shit happening: http://sol-system.com/koxenrider/bok/ydie.html) is figure out how to clump together yet still be able to infect, so it is far from perfect. However, I think this really goes a long way toward opening up a brand new front in targeted drug delivery and would expect to see amazing things based on this concept over the next decade or two.
