Animal studies lend support to an innovative HIV vaccine strategy — but there’s still a long way to go
HIV has long stumped immunologists looking to develop an effective vaccine. All of the most promising approaches pioneered in the past three and a half decades have ultimately failed, and only a few months ago, the last trial expected to potentially deliver a vaccine within this decade was shut down.
But HIV scientists are nothing if not resilient, and used to trying one new approach after another. One of the latest and most promising centers around teaching the immune system to produce powerful and protective antibody responses through exposure to a series of different vaccine molecules. Researchers are already beginning to test this strategy in people, and on Thursday the strategy gained additional support from a set of four studies published in Science, Science Translational Medicine, and Science Immunology.
