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HIV Vaccine Ready For Clinical Trials
amigoro writes with the happy news that a possible vaccine against HIV is nearing readiness for clinical trials. The compound could provide a 'double whammy' by not only inoculating the patient against future infection, but destroying an HIV infection in progress. "The vaccine is an artificial virus-like particle whose outer casing consists of the TBI (T- and B cell epitopes containing immunogen) protein constructed by the researchers combined with the polyglucin protein. This protein contains nine components stimulating different cells of the immune system: both the ones that produce antibodies and the ones that devour the newcomer."
http://vrc.nih.gov/clintrials/clinstudies.htm These are ongoing safety trials at the National Institutes of Health.
According to Wikipedia, there are 17 candidates in phase I trials, four in phase I/II, and one in phase III.
That same article mentions that there is a great degree of diversity in HIV, meaning one HIV vaccine won't protect against all strains.
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As someone who has actually worked on an HIV vaccine (a plasmid-based DNA vaccine), I have to caution that the field is a graveyard of failed attempts, ranging from traditional vaccine methods a century old, to exotic cutting-edge variants. There is considerable skepticism that an HIV vaccine (even given a very elastic definition of "vaccine") is even possible, in part based on the apparently complete absence of any "natural" sterilizing immunity. At best, there exists a small population of non-progressors who are able to hold the virus at stalemate due to genetic variations in certain receptors, a mechanism that seems unhelpful as far as vaccines goes (although relevant to drugs, specifically entry-inhibitors).
While VLPs (virus-like particles) are certainly a promising vaccine technology (the cervical cancer vaccine that's been in the news recently is VLP-based), I really am pessimistic that it is the solution to the substantial problems that any working HIV vaccine would have to overcome. At this point, I don't think anything will work short of somehow granting a patient's immune system innate resistance to HIV through some kind of gene therapy approach (there actually are people working on this sort of approach, but gene therapy as a whole has a long way to go).
The page itself is pretty obviously not a high traffic news site; i almost mistook it for a genric squatter site. This is all goooogle turned up http://www.citeulike.org/article/1423027 (that's not a squatter page either). The link from TFA is pretty legit, http://www.springerlink.com/content/h0u280742k2530 6p/. Clearly a paper was written in some obscure Russian science journal and reprinted in english, and then this article surfaces out of the blue about said paper. There wouldn't be any quotes because the only source is the paper itself. Since the paper itself costs money to look at, and I don't know anything about the source journal, or how thorough its peer reviews are (not could I find anything out except from that one link from TFA), it's at least within the realm of possibility that the paper is exaggerated or even totally bogus. But jeez, look at all those names.
"Civilization is all about beating the environment into forms that suit us better." - John Carmack
Mumble mumble making a vaccine for a polymorphic virus mumble - wish I hadn't bought that company's stock...