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visionaries a limited series this looks at figures trying to transform our way of life.

Ravindra Gupta had been studying drug-resistant HIV for over a decade when she first met Adam Castillejo, who would become known as a drug addict. “The London Sick” The second person in the world to be cured of HIV, Dr. Drawing on Ravi, Gupta was a professor at University College London and doubled down on the clinical and academic worlds when Mr Castillejo presented himself as both HIV-positive and recurrent lymphoma after an illness. The previous transplant, which used healthy stem cells from Mr. Castillejo’s own body, had failed.

It builds on the work of German hematologist Gero Hütter and others who began treating Timothy Ray Brown, known as the first person of HIV. “Berlin sick” — Dr. Gupta and colleagues proposed using stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that prevents some people from being infected with HIV. Mr. Castillejo agreed and performed the transplant in 2016. Mr. Castillejo has stopped taking antiretroviral drugs that keep HIV at bay. In 2019, three years after the transplant, Dr. Gupta published the results in Nature, confirming that Mr. Castillejo had recovered from HIV.

The news shook the scientific world and reinvigorated the search for cures. Dr. Gupta was hired as a professor of clinical microbiology at Cambridge and established the Gupta Lab on the school’s biomedical campus to continue his research.

A few months later, the coronavirus pandemic struck – and with nations locked down and medical systems taxed to the breaking point, it found itself within the answer.

“Respiratory viruses were never something I would consider getting into. I didn’t think we had the skills or expertise to be useful,” said Dr. Gupta soon. However, “The clinical interface of what I was doing drove me to work on SARS. Things went bad here in March and everything was closed. One of the desperate needs was identified as rapid testing.”

Soon his team had completely spun around and was publishing some of the first research confirming rapid and antibody tests for the coronavirus using techniques developed during HIV research. Over the past two and a half years, Gupta Lab has launched cutting-edge research that explains how new variants arise and provides some of the first evidence that Covid infections are possible in vaccinated individuals.

In his Cambridge lab, he discussed both the remarkable strides scientists have made in the past three years and the consequences of the public’s decline in scientific knowledge.

This interview was summarized and edited.

How has previous research on AIDS/HIV affected the response to coronavirus?

The response to SARS-CoV-2 has been greatly accelerated by advances in HIV. Great advances have been made in making drugs, targeting viruses, and much of this technology has been developed on HIV.

What are the similarities between these two pandemics?

Both caused a great deal of panic, more SARS-CoV-2 than HIV – with good reason, because it’s respiratory related. Some people are more vulnerable than others, and socioeconomics certainly matters. Also, in this age of vaccines, rich versus poor, global north versus global south – all these inequalities are happening.

Has this global emergency improved your ability to work with colleagues in various disciplines?

It definitely sparked a lot of interaction that we wouldn’t have otherwise. We took an interest in immunology, we did very modern studies with our colleagues downstairs and in different parts of the building. We started using stem cells to make artificial lungs for experiments. All this started to happen as a result of an emergency. People we would never talk to, ideas we would never have. So scientifically it was really exciting.

Does the fatigue explain the diminished public response to Covid?

Yeah, I think so too. I think that intensity causes a depletion of emotional energy. Of course, advances have been made in HIV in about 20 years. This happened too quickly for Covid. And in the absence of a vaccine and mRNA technology we would be in a much darker place.

We’re seeing a decline in trust in institutions across society, but in your field, for example, people who refuse to be vaccinated have serious consequences. Has this affected the way you think scientists and the medical establishment should communicate with the public?

I think there is a general lack of trust among people who provide information to the public. This is partly driven by industries where the public is spreading misinformation. I think the actual communication was pretty good in the beginning – you have clear messages and I think it was pretty good. Public health messages have become more complex because no one wants to wear masks.

For example, after the vaccine, people thought we would be without masks. We published an article in Nature. in breakthrough infections and the next week the CDC demonstrated our work to mask it, even with a vaccine. This sounds normal now but it was driving people crazy back then. But it was true, because after a few months your response may decrease, and many people who get a double dose of the vaccine can get a second reinfection. Thus, they all contributed to the confusion caused by a lack of education or knowledge of nuances. And one thing we have to deal with now is that communication takes on nuances that even scientists can’t grasp. Therefore, it is almost impossible to expect the public to understand this. So we are at a crossroads in how we convey complex messages.

Will there be long-term consequences if we can’t persuade a larger portion of the population to get vaccinated?

In places like China, where the population is relatively naive about vaccines and vaccines are not necessarily the best, circulation can begin. And if people don’t take their boosters on time, we may reach a time when it becomes another major health concern of the magnitude we’ve seen before. I can imagine we might be in trouble again in a few years. The worrying thing is that we’re unraveling a lot of the things we’ve developed to deal with this.