Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Newsday - June 20, 1995
Laurie Garrett - Staff Writer
Based on a decade-long study of 756 licensed female prostitutes in Dakar, Senegal, a team of researchers from Harvard University and the University of Cheikh Anta Diop found that women who were initially HIV-2 positive were 70 percent less likely to become infected with HIV-1 than their HIV-2 negative colleagues.
The discovery provides a bright ray of hope for otherwise beleaguered AIDS vaccine researchers because it shows that naturally acquired infection with one species of HIV can stimulate a strong enough immune response to protect most people against secondary infection with another HIV species.
The two species of AIDS virus have a few identical components but are sufficiently distinct genetically that few scientists thought one HIV species could trigger an immune response against the other.
"It's a wake-up call," Dr. Wayne Koff of United Biomedical Corp. in Hauppauge said in an interview. "It's nice to have something positive for a change." Before he joined United Biomedical, Koff led the federal government's AIDS vaccine effort for several years.
While it takes much longer to develop symptoms of AIDS from HIV-2 than HIV, it remains fatal and could not, in itself, serve as a vaccine, experts said. But Koff nonetheless called the discovery "an important lead."
"It's probably telling us that it [an AIDS vaccine] is doable," he said, "and that you'd better have some kind of cellular immunity component."
Last week, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced initiation of human trials of three potential AIDS vaccines that seek to boost the cellular arm of the immune system, rather than antibodies. One of those vaccines, a combination oral and injectable genetically engineered product, is made by United Biomedical.
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