Scientists Target Antibodies That Work Against Many HIV Mutations

Discovery may focus development of an effective vaccine

August 22, 2011

Scientists have identified antibodies that might be effective against a broad range of HIV mutations, and which could lead to an effective HIV vaccine.

The search for a vaccine against HIV/AIDS has been disappointing, in part because the virus cleverly changes to elude the antibodies of the human immune system. Now, scientists have identified antibodies that may be effective against a broad range of HIV mutations.

Vaccines work by stimulating the body's own immune system to mount a defense against disease. But the human immune system just isn't very good at fighting off an HIV infection, in part because the virus is constantly mutating. That's been a big obstacle to developing an HIV vaccine, as Laura M. Walker of the Scripps Research Institute in California says.

"For HIV, current vaccines, because of the variability of the virus, don't induce antibodies that are able to recognize many different virus strains. And therefore, they usually are not very effective in preventing infection or preventing disease."

But Walker and her colleagues identified rare antibodies that were effective against a large number of the virus variations in circulation.

In the lab, they mixed those antibodies with HIV and saw that the virus was neutralized, and a relatively small amount of antibodies did the trick.