The outstanding progress in boosting the immune system to treat cancer may help unlock a cure for HIV, according to scientists meeting in Paris.
The body's normal defences struggle to clear the body of HIV and cancer.
But the rapidly emerging field of immunotherapy has seen some patients with terminal cancer go into complete remission.
The hope is that a similar approach could clear someone of HIV, although some experts have urged caution.
HIV treatment requires daily antiretroviral drugs to kill any active virus. Left unchecked, HIV can destroy the immune system, causing Aids.
A cure is currently impossible because drugs and the immune system fail to detect the sleeping or "latent" HIV hiding in the body's cells.
Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of HIV, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, told the BBC: "One of the mechanisms why [latently infected cells] persist is the fact they are proliferating very similar to tumour cells.
'It's huge'
"Those cells are expressing molecules that are the same molecules that are expressed on tumour cells.
"So that raises the question whether we could develop a strategy for HIV-cure similar to the novel treatment in the field of cancer."
She is one of the scientists attending the HIV and Cancer Cure Forum in Paris.
Prof Sharon Lewin, the director of the Doherty Institute in Australia, agrees there is much to learn from cancer.