Print

Mail

wiki links

Researchers tout progress in vaccine to combat HIV

A promising new vaccine that employs a two-punch strategy to combat the HIV virus received preliminary laboratory recognition and is ready for further development before it can be used on humans, a joint project between Academia Sinica and the US' Scripps Research Institute said yesterday.

The study, led by Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠), was published last month in the online version of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which called the project "a new chapter for preventive and therapeutic HIV research."

Past attempts to combat HIV -- the virus responsible for AIDS -- by increasing patient immunity have failed clinically, Wong said, but the new vaccine tackles the problem in a different way with synthetic chemicals called "glycodendrons."

Glycodendrons have a two-fold function, Wong said. They inhibit the HIV from entering the body through its traditional route and trigger an immune antibody response to a specific carbohydrate structure on the HIV surface to stop the infection from spreading.

innovative

The innovative vaccine capitalizes on two recent findings in HIV research, Wong said.

"First, it was discovered that after entering human bodies through sexual contact, HIV evades immune detection and reaches its targets -- immune T-cells in the lymphoid system -- by latching onto the human immunity system fighters, dendritic cells," he said

The location for HIV attachment was a receptor protein known as DC-SIGN, found on the cells' surface, he said.

Second is an extremely rare antibody called 2G12 found in some Austrians that kept them healthy after HIV infection, Liang Pi-hui (梁碧惠), one of the group's researchers, told the Taipei Times.

prevention

"When HIV enters the body, 2G12 triggers infection prevention mechanisms when the antibody binds with a dense sugar cluster found on the HIV surface," she said.

"When we built a dendron structure that mimicked 2G12, so that this antibody response could be triggered in lab rats, we found that the structure also bound with the DC-SIGN, preventing the HIV from latching onto it," she said.

The next stage of experiments would involve testing the vaccine on different strains of HIV and evaluating potential preventive strategies, she said.
This story has been viewed 1880 times.