After decades of unsuccessful development of a vaccine that effectively resists HIV, the US federal government recently promised to provide Scripps Institute with US$129 million in funding for the development and testing of multi-level new HIV vaccines. This research work will be carried out by the HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development Federation or CHAVD (International Cooperation Organization).
Image source: NIAID
CHAVD director Dennis Burton said the Scripps Institute will receive about half of the funds in the seven years of funding, and the remaining funds will be allocated to 13 other CHAVD members, including four foreign projects. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will use the funding it has received to put the previous seven years of research into practice. Researchers will use a series of methods to train the body's immune system to produce powerful antibodies to neutralize a wide range of HIV strains.
Now researchers have confirmed this in animal models. They want to translate the relevant research results into human clinical trials. Researcher Anthony Fauci said that this "step-by-step" vaccination is very necessary because the body's immune system must be induced before effectively resisting HIV infection. It is impossible for patients to produce the correct type of antibodies immediately in the body by just one or two injections, just like they are injected with measles vaccine.
Extensive neutralizing antibodies are found in the blood of HIV-infected people. These antibodies usually take years to allow the immune system to learn how to produce them. By then, HIV may have developed to a point where it cannot be eradicated from the human body. Researcher Burton said the purpose of this multi-stage vaccine is to compress the body's immune education to a few months. At present, they do not know how long the process will take or how many stages it will take. Currently, researchers will have three, four or five vaccinations, but the things in each syringe are different because researchers will carry the antibody reaction where they want to go, which is called broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies.
The researchers said that the complete process may take about 9 months, with each dose being several months apart. The researchers will evaluate the patient's immune response at each stage of the vaccination, thus setting the exact time. Burton said that starting from September last year, we started the initiation of the immunization response, and the results of the first phase will be announced later this year. Based on previous project funding, researchers have elucidated how the human body's immune system can effectively resist HIV. In part of this work, researchers focused on understanding how broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies block HIV infection, while others focused on how the body made these antibodies.
Currently, researchers have analyzed whether this sequential immunization method can play a role in animal bodies. Researcher Shane Crotty said that among the 1 million naturally-producing B cells, only one can produce broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies. Therefore, the current question is whether sufficient useful B cells can be produced by most of the body's immune system, or whether this ability is limited to a few people. The researchers said that in most populations, these cells need to be further exposed to HIV-related immune stimulating species to mature, and the multi-stage vaccine is designed to achieve this goal.
Currently, researchers are not sure whether this gradual vaccine strategy will work. Researcher Fauci said that we should maintain an optimistic attitude and design new vaccine strategies to effectively prevent HIV infection through more in-depth research in the future.
Reference:
NIH to fund testing and development of HIV vaccine
After decades of failing to develop an effective vaccine against HIV, the federal government has committed $129 million to a new effort led by Scripps Research.
The National Institutes of Health award was announced Wednesday. It will fund development and testing of a multistage preventive vaccine. The work will be performed by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development, or CHAVD, an international collaboration.
Scripts Research scientists in La Jolla will get about half the money over the grant's seven-year life, said Dennis Burton, co-chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, and CHAVD's director. The rest goes to 13 other CHAVD groups, including projects at four foreign locations.........
