An HIV vaccine blueprint
San Diego BioMed would like to recognize Professor James Binley who has been given the honor of writing a perspective on a breakthrough paper by researchers at UPenn in the top journal, Science.
This paper describes a study in which preclinical models were infected by a chimeric virus that includes a mutated form of the HIV coat protein. Within a year of infection, most infections resulted in the hosts developing broadly neutralizing antibodies. This occurred by a series of mutations in the virus and the antibody response, so that the antibodies could rapidly zero in on a conserved site of vulnerability on HIV. This work is pivotal as it provides a detailed molecular template for researchers to develop a vaccine that could elicit similar antibodies in humans that could ward off HIV infection.