Using Rice to Prevent HIV

Guest: Evangelia Vamvaka, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher in Plant and Microbial Biology, UC Berkeley While the spread of HIV and rates of treatment for the virus have improved dramatically over the last 20 years, women and girls remain at serious risk. The majority of new HIV infections globally are among women and young women, in particular, are twice as likely to acquire HIV as young men the same age. This imbalance is driven by sexual violence and the inability of women in some cultures to demand that an infected partner take precautions to prevent the virus from spreading to her. Could a newly engineered strain of rice inhibit the tranmission of HIV through sexual intercourse?