In making an HIV vaccine, a major goal is to stimulate production of broadly neutralizing antibodies that can fight multiple strains of the frequently changing virus. To date, experimental HIV vaccines haven’t been able to induce these kinds of antibodies. In fact, the immune system actively stops their production, seeing them as a threat.
Another challenge is that broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) require specific genetic changes that occur only rarely in the B cells that generate them. But researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) have come up with an immunization approach that may allow bnAbs to survive and multiply to fight HIV. Their findings appear this week in Science.
Steering antibody development for a better HIV vaccine
When people are exposed to HIV (or any pathogen), they first make precursor antibodies. These then mature via mutation coupled with natural selection. Through more exposures and many iterations, the antibodies evolve to become more protective over time.
“Mice that express human broadly neutralizing antibodies have provided powerful new model systems in which we can iteratively test experimental HIV vaccines,” Alt explains.
