Imagine never having to take a pill again. Instead, mini drug factories hidden inside your bones, and made from your own immune cells, would churn out personalised drugs and other molecules designed to keep you fit and healthy. Such a factory has been created in mice, and could soon be tested in humans to treat HIV.

"We want to turn people's cells into drug factories, giving them the genetic information they need to produce their own treatment," says Matthew Scholz of Immusoft in Seattle. Immusoft is focusing on B-cells, a component of the immune system. One of their roles is to produce antibodies against infections or unwanted foreign substances such as toxins. In 2009, David Baltimore and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena showed that stem cells from bone marrow could be engineered to develop into B-cells that made antibodies against HIV.

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