HIV Prevention: Researchers Suggest Identifying Antibodies and Human Genes as New Strategy for Making Effective Vaccine Against the Disease

Researchers have collaborated to make critical advances in the development of an effective vaccine for protection from human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.

A Mint report said that, according to the World Health Organization, HIV targets the immune system and weakens the defense of people against many infections and certain cancer types that those who have healthy immune systems can easily combat.

As the virus destroys and damages the immune cell function, infected individuals slowly become immunodeficient. The most advanced and common HIV stage is AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

The research describes the initial steps in a vaccine approach that aims to prompt the development of the so-called bnAbs or broadly neutralizing antibodies. These are antibodies, broad enough to combat and protect against many strains of a virus.

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bnAbs and Human Genes Needed To Make HIV Vaccines

Through identification of the most promising bnAbs and the human genes needed to make the vaccines, as well as designing mRNA and protein vaccine candidates to start the creation of bnAB and verifying the vaccine candidates, the research team is paving the way to create an effective vaccine against HIV.

HIV has killed around 40.1 million individuals thus far, making it a major global public health problem. "Between 510,000 and 860,000 individuals died from HIV-related causes last year, and 1.5 million people got infected with the virus. Furthermore, HIV is not curable. 

According to William Schief, Ph.D., senior author of two studies on this vaccine development strategy, a Scripps Research professor and executive director of vaccine design at IAVI's Neutralizing Antibody Center Scripps Research, their works describe a collaborative initiative to genetically and structurally understand bnAbs, and eventually "reverse engineer" vaccines to elicit such antibodies.

Advantage of Identifying bnAbs Early

As indicated in a similar Devdiscourse report, HIV has been one of the most difficult viruses to shield against due to its natural ability to rapidly mutate and evade capture from the immune system.

Working closely together throughout scientific disciplines and institutions, the findings of the team mark an essential step forward in overcoming these historic hurdles and developing an effective HIV vaccine.

Researchers have long investigated how a small percentage of infected people with HIV are able to make bnAbs, a similar Big News Network report specified that 

Even when bnAbs do develop during HIV infections, they occur quite late to help block the virus. Nonetheless, researchers have shown that bnAbs can shield against the virus if they are present prior to a person's infection with HIV.

Precursor Antibodies

The study's co-first author of both papers, Zachary Berndsen, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Missouri, explained that finding the bnAbs needed "is like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Professor Andrew Ward added that, to make an effective vaccine, there must be a need to find the precursor antibodies that can ultimately become bnAbs while seeing if such precursor antibodies are common enough throughout the general population to stimulate.

Related information about the strategy for vaccine development is shown on ABC 10 News YouTube video below:

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