WUST News (Reporter Bi Haoyang) Recently, the Hubei Association for Science and Technology (HAST) announced the list of the 2025 Top 10 Scientific and Technological Advances of Hubei. A research achievement submitted by the WUST Association for Science and Technology, led by Professor Gu Chaojiang from the College of Life Science and Health, has been successfully selected. Titled “The World’s First Engineered Exosome-mediated Gene Editing System Delivery Achieves a Groundbreaking Breakthrough in the Functional Cure of AIDS”, it is the only award-winning achievement from a provincial university in this selection.
The jury noted that Professor Gu’s team has focused on the global medical challenge of curing AIDS. By establishing the world’s first non-viral CRISPR-Cas12a delivery platform based on engineered exosomes, the team has achieved a revolutionary breakthrough in HIV treatment. This milestone marks China’s major progress in cutting-edge research on AIDS cure strategies and demonstrates Hubei’s original innovation capacity and global influence in the frontier field of life and health. It not only brings new hope for the functional and even complete cure of AIDS but also pioneers a new direction for the treatment of major diseases such as chronic viral infections, holding remarkable scientific value, clinical prospects and social significance.
Organized by the HAST, the Top 10 Scientific and Technological Advances of Hubei is one of the most authoritative and representative annual honors in Hubei’s science and technology sector. Designed to showcase landmark scientific achievements and boost technological innovation, the selected works represent the province’s highest level of annual scientific progress. The 10 advances for 2025 were finalized through multi-channel recommendations from provincial academic societies, universities, research institutes and enterprise science associations, followed by expert reviews, academician voting and public announcement.
The “EMT-Cas12a therapy” developed by Professor Gu’s team refers to an exosome-mediated targeted CRISPR-Cas12a delivery system. Unlike conventional therapies that only achieve long-term viral suppression rather than radical cure, this breakthrough uses exosomes as biological couriers to deliver the Cas12a gene scissors. The system precisely targets HIV, cleaves its viral genome and realizes functional cure at the source.
This research has been published in Molecular Therapy, a top-tier journal under Cell Press, and was nominated for a European Global Scientific and Technological Progress and Breakthrough Award. On World AIDS Day (December 1, 2025), coverage of the achievement on WUST’s Douyin and WeChat Channels garnered 14 million views. It has also received extensive media coverage from authoritative outlets including People’s Network, Xinhua News Agency, China News Service, China Science Daily and Hubei Daily.
