"Two Strides Toward a Workable AIDS Vaccine"

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1992. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

"Two Strides Toward a Workable AIDS Vaccine"

Science News (12/19-26/92) Vol. 142, Nos. 25 + 26, P. 422
Ezzell, C.

Abstract: Two recent studies have made significant progress toward the development of an effective AIDS vaccine. The first study used a vaccine made of crippled but live virus to completely protect a group of monkeys from simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). The second involved a research team which determined that HIV picks up bits of the cells it infects, perhaps as a means of improving their ability to latch onto and attack new cells. Ronald C. Desrosiers and his colleagues from the New England Regional Primate Research Center in Southborogh, Mass., used a strain of SIV by removing a gene called nef, which is believed to regulate the virus' ability to reproduce. They discovered that a single immunization with live, weakened virus allowed each of the four monkeys to fight infection following repeated injections of enough virulent SIV to infect 10 animals--even though the vaccine was administered more than two years previously. The researchers claim their findings indicate that a similar strategy involving live HIV "may also be the most potent, effective vaccine for the prevention of AIDS" in humans. Another study conducted by Larry O. Arthur, director of the AIDS vaccine program at the National Cancer Institute's Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center in Frederick, Md., found on the surfaces of HIV particles clusters of molecules that human immune system cells normally use to communicate with one another. They found that both SIV and HIV selectively concentrate more major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins, possibly to enable them to better adhere to and infect other cells.

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