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Friday, April 12, 2013

Research could be potential path to development of AIDS vaccine.


The New York Times (4/4, McNeil, Subscription Publication, 1.68M) reports, "In what may be an important step toward a long-elusive AIDS vaccine, American researchers have minutely tracked one person's powerful immune response to the virus to see how a series of mutations led to an antibody that can defeat many H.I.V. strains." While "a vaccine still remains far off...the research," published in Nature, "lighted up one complex path that may someday be followed to that distant goal." According to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which provided funding for the research, "The beauty of this is that it's a big clue as to the sequential steps the virus and the antibody take as they evolve."
        The Wall Street Journal (4/4, McKay, Subscription Publication, 2.29M) reports that, according to Dr. Fauci, this study "opens up a very interesting strategy" for the development of "a vaccine that mimics the evolution of the virus."
        Bloomberg News (4/4, Cortez) reports, "Blood samples from the person were used to monitor the AIDS virus as it mutated to evade immune system antibodies." Although "HIV almost always wins that battle, scientists after two years of testing the man found he was among the 20 percent of patients who eventually produce 'broadly neutralizing antibodies' able to shut down most forms of HIV." This enabled "them to study the antibodies closely as they evolved, offering potential approaches to spark their natural production through a vaccine, the researchers said."
        The Durham (NC) Herald Sun (4/4, Offen, 19K) reports, "The research team, led by Barton Haynes, the director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and John Mascola, acting director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, was aided by new technologies that can detect early infection and track the subsequent immune response and virus evolution."

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