A Step Closer to an Effective HIV Vaccine
December 17, 2024—In a significant HIV milestone, researchers have learned how to stimulate the immune system in animal models to produce large quantities of broadly neutralizing antibodies against the human immunodeficiency virus—a prerequisite for an effective vaccine against HIV.
“We still have much to do before we can make a vaccine for humans, but we’ve shown it’s possible to reproducibly induce the antibody response needed to neutralize HIV,” says study leader Peter Kwong, PhD, the Richard J. Stock Professor of Medical Sciences and professor of biochemistry & molecular biophysics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. (Kwong was formerly chief of the Structural Biology Section at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, where most of the research was conducted).
The two-step approach uses vaccination with a conserved part of HIV to trigger B cells to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies, followed by infection with a modified form of the virus. “The first step stimulates the immune system to create broadly neutralizing antibodies, which recognize a wide range of HIV strains. The second step—infection—demonstrated that high titers could be achieved, though in an unusual way, with only one to a few B cell lineages providing for all the neutralization,” explains Kwong.
The study was published in the Dec. 12 issue of Cell.
Continue reading... https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/step-closer-effective-hiv-vaccine-0
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Helen Garey, MPH
Associate Director, Science Communications and Media Relations
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Contact: hbg3@cumc.columbia.edu / 917-514-1317
Source: https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/step-closer-effective-hiv-vaccine-0
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Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC)
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