Scientiists say they are closing in on HIV Vaccine!!!

Scientists say there's new hope in the quest to prevent HIV.

A team from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and other organizations recently discovered two human antibodies that may stop more than 90 percent of known HIV strains from infecting human cells, according to a news release from the National Institutes of Health.

Finding these disease-fighting proteins may help scientists design better HIV vaccines to treat and prevent the infection, and the method they used to find these antibodies could also be applied to other diseases.

"The discovery of these exceptionally broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV and the structural analysis that explains how they work are exciting advances that will accelerate our efforts to find a preventive HIV vaccine for global use," Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, said in a statement. "In addition, the technique the teams used to find the new antibodies represents a novel strategy that could be applied to vaccine design for many other infectious diseases."

The scientists found these two naturally-occurring antibodies, called VRC01 and VRC02, in the blood of one individual infected with HIV using a molecular device made of HIV proteins. The device pinpoints the specific cells that make antibodies to fight off HIV, and scientists modified it to react only with antibodies specific to where HIV binds to the cells that it infects.

The authors of the study, published in the online edition of the journal Science, found the VRC01 and VRC02 deactivated more HIV strains with more power than other known antibodies.

They also discovered the atomic structure of VRC01 when it attached to HIV, which allowed the team to determine how the antibody worked and locate where it attached to the virus. From this, they have started to design a vaccine that could teach the immune system to make antibodies similar to VRC01 and prevent infection from the majority of HIV strains.

Finding a way to counteract HIV strains has been difficult for scientists in the past. Not only do the the strains continuously change to avoid recognition by the bodies' immune system, but there are also countless variations of HIV strains that exist worldwide.

But there are a few areas on HIV's surface that remain virtually consistent. One of these areas is called the CD4 binding site, where HIV attaches to immune system cells and infects them. VRC01 and VRC02 attach to this CD4 site and block the HIV infection from latching onto immune cells.

"The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains," Dr. John R. Mascola, the deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the NAID and one of the study authors, said in a statement.

By examining VRC01's structure, the scientists determined that the immune system could most likely produce VRC01 precursors. They also confirmed that VRC01 does not bind to human cells, which is promising because the immune system would typically eliminate the antibody in order to prevent autoimmune disease.

To complete the antibody development process, B cells, which produce antibodies, are used to recognize specific parts of a virus and either mutate or mature so that the antibody can bind to the pathogen more firmly. This is where the problem with the new vaccine may lie.

VRC01 precursors do not bind tightly to HIV and instead mature into more forcefully neutralizing forms. Dr. Peter D. Kwong, a study author and chief of the structural biology section at the Vaccine Research Center, explained that the scientists are addressing this issue by designing vaccine components (which they are currently studying) that would guide the immune system through this maturation and generate a VRC01-like antibody from its precursors.

"The discoveries we have made may overcome the limitations that have long stymied antibody-based HIV vaccine design," Kwong said in a statement.

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