[bluelu]

Could someone with more knowledge explain to me why a vaccine against HIV would not also be a cure?

If the body has antibodies against HIV so you can't get infected, it should also be possible to kill HIV as well when you are infected? Especially since the vaccine targets a structure which the normal immune protection normally doesn't target?

[thanatosmin]

Protection from infection is sort of like cleaning up a spill on your doorstep. Curing an active infection is more like cleaning up after someone deliberately blew dirt throughout your whole house, and hid some extra in nooks and crannies.

[cmckn]

A vaccine has the potential to give you enough of an immune response to prevent an infection. But eradicating an existing HIV infection is a very different problem. The virus lies dormant in large quantities, and your immune system will only attack the virus that’s “awake”. The current research for a cure is focusing on eliminating this viral reservoir. While your immune system could theoretically keep the active HIV at bay, leading to a functional cure; we’ve never seen this play out (other than in Timothy Ray Brown). HIV always wakes up, and replicates faster than your lymphocytes can kill it (while using your immune system as a virus factory).