Since the first reports of HIV infection in the early 1980s, multiple clinical trials have tested potential vaccines against the virus, but unfortunately, HIV has numerous defense mechanisms that prevent a person’s immune system from mounting an effective response following HIV vaccination. An alternative anti-HIV strategy called vectored immunoprophylaxis (VIP) designed by researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) involves an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector to deliver instructions to muscle cells to pump out antibodies that block the virus. The strategy recently generated promising results in a phase I clinical trial that was conducted by the National Institutes of Health and is published in Nature Medicine.
