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Scientists Expose Weak DNA in HIV
Ace905 writes "The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced Thursday that they had discovered a very promising 'weak spot' in the HIV virus. The HIV virus, a progenitor to full blown AIDS has eluded all attempts at a vaccine since it was discovered sometime in the 1970's. The major problem with developing a vaccine initially was isolating the virus. Conventional viruses are often defeated with existing drugs, or after being tested against new compounds. HIV has been unique, and staggering in it's ability to resist all attempts at treatment by mutating its own genetic code. HIV is able to resist, with great effectiveness, any drug or combination drug-therapy that is used against it."
The story that is referenced in the BBC news article refers to the structure of an antibody binding the gp120 surface glycoprotein of HIV. This has nothing to do with 'weak' DNA. The reason why this is exciting is that the b12 region is relatively invariable, whereas most antibodies made against HIV bind variable regions of the surface glycoproteins that are prone to change from virus to virus as the genome is mutated. The majority of anti-HIV antibodies are therefore only useful against specific isolates and can be easily escaped by mutation. Antibodies against the b12 region are therefore potential vaccine candidates.
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Yeah, pretending that HIV "does" things intentionally to avoid vaccination is highly misleading. The problem is that viruses in general replicate quickly, and HIV in particular mutates very quickly from one generation to the next, while remaining viable. This lets an infection explore the parameter space of possible genotypes very fast. To be effective, a treatment needs to target some relatively stable feature of the virus, and eliminate the virus faster than the population can mutate away from that vulnerability. Unfortunately, HIV usually wins on both counts.