Are we close to finding a vaccine for HIV? The discovery of potent antibodies that can neutralize HIV strains in late 2012 has given us hope.
The significant breakthrough happened in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October 2012. Researchers found that two South African women with HIV had developed antibodies that neutralized and killed over 90% of known HIV strains. This finding could pave the way for a vaccine against the virus.
South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS, with more than five million out of a population of about 50 million affected.
The study, conducted by the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), involved researchers from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and various universities in the country. They collected blood samples from the two women over several years. Throughout the study, they noticed sugar molecules on the outer protein of the virus called glycan, which made the virus vulnerable at a specific spot known as position 332. This vulnerability allowed the women’s immune systems to generate antibodies that killed most HIV strains by targeting this weak spot.
The ability of glycan to destroy most HIV strains is crucial. Finding a cure for HIV has been challenging because the virus exists in many different forms. While this new antibody doesn’t cure the disease, it does prevent the virus from spreading to healthy cells.
Scientists detected these neutralizing antibodies around three years before this study, but they did not understand how the body produced them until now. The discovery is described as a cat-and-mouse game between the HIV virus and the body’s immune response.
Researchers from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, studying HIV in the U.S., suggest that the vulnerability site, position 332, may be present in about two-thirds of HIV strains found in South Africa. Therefore, to develop an effective AIDS vaccine, future research will need to target additional spots on the virus.