Extensive research has been made into developing the elusive HIV vaccine craved by the masses for decades. Now Philip Johnson and his colleagues of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania have developed a novel vaccine which has undergone animal testing with promising results.
Nine monkeys were vaccinated using this trial drug, and six monkeys were left unvaccinated as a control group. 85 weeks after SIV, the monkey form of HIV, was injected into all the monkeys, all nine vaccinated monkeys showed no symptoms at all, whereas four out of the six unvaccinated monkeys died from monkey AIDS.
This new vaccine works by genetically modifying muscle tissue using an injection of a virus programmed to load genes into the nuclei of muscle cells, those genes instruct those cells to create immunoadhesins en-masse. Immunoadhesins are molecules which have properties similar to anti-bodies; these ones in particular were pre-selected for their ability to attack the SIV virus. This method completely sidesteps the immune system which is usually responsible for fighting off viral and bacterial infections, but the immune system is targeted by HIV and thus useless.
The international AIDS Vaccine Initiative, senior vice-president of research and development, Wayne Koff, said “Within two to three years, we would hope to have this in the clinic”.
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.1967.html
