Breakthrough in AIDS vaccine development

The US scientists of Rutgers University have achieved a milestone by turning a corner in their search for a HIV vaccine against deadly virus of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

According to Journal of Virology which has published the latest development of AIDS vaccine, scientist Gail Ferstandig Arnold and his wife Eddy Arnold along with their colleagues have almost created an HIV vaccine that will help curb an unusually diverse set of HIV isolates or varieties.

The Arnold duo and their team with the support of National Institutes of Health have been able to take a small piece of HIV from its native framework that was involved with helping the virus enter cells and put it in a completely different system of rhinovirus – the common cold virus which morphologically and functionally same but not fatal as HIV virus – and then immunized animals with it.

This experiment showed an amazing effect as antibodies which developed in the blood of subject (animals) had potential to stop the unusual diverse set of HIV isolates or varieties.

The research team tried millions of different variations of HIV virus with rhinovirus using recombinant engineering to develop a potential vaccine that could generate antibodies against a huge variety of isolates of HIV.

The approach behind this experiment was to identify a part of the AIDS virus that is crucial to its viability - something the virus needs in order to complete its life cycle. They spotted it and then targeted its weakness – the transformed environment that would not allow HIV virus to process ahead.

“The part that we targeted plays a role in the ability of HIV to enter cells, and is common to most HIV varieties. That is a mechanism that would not be easy for the virus to reinvent on the fly, so it turns out to be a really helpful target," said Gail Ferstandig Arnold.

‘The really exciting part is that we were able to find viruses that could elicit antibodies against a huge variety of isolates of HIV. That is an immense step and a very important step,’ added Ferstandig Arnold.

For developing the AIDS vaccine, the researchers worked on the general theory of developing vaccine that is ‘most vaccines are usually made from the pathogen itself’ that stimulate weakened or inactivated organisms to stimulate antibody production.

However, the other scientists have warned that the result of this outcome might be too optimistic; in response, Edyy Arnold, the co-researcher said, “It is probably not potent enough by itself to be the vaccine or a vaccine, but it is a proof of principle that what we are trying to do is a very sound idea.”