Antibody Discovered To Boost HIV Vaccines

An anonymous reader sends this clip from Scienceblog.com. "Scientists have discovered two potent human antibodies that can stop more than 90 percent of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells in the laboratory, and have demonstrated how one of these disease-fighting proteins accomplishes this feat. ... Research efforts to find individual antibodies that can neutralize HIV strains have been difficult because the virus continuously changes its surface proteins to evade recognition by the immune system. As a consequence of these changes, an enormous number of HIV variants exist worldwide. However, there are a few surface areas that remain nearly constant across all variants of HIV and scientists have now discovered two potent human antibodies that attach to one of these sites and can stop more than 90 percent of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells in the laboratory. ... The researchers also confirmed that VRC01 does not bind to human cells — a characteristic that might otherwise lead to its elimination during immune development, a natural mechanism the body employs to prevent autoimmune disease."

Comments

Re:Techno Puzzle

[PerfectionLost]

He won't. You opt out as part of your agreement to lab testing. There was an article about this on NPR a couple months ago, but I can't seem to find it.

Not all it's cracked up to be

[overshoot]

An HIV researcher's take on the news.

Note on reverse transcription

[johnpc831]

If my memory of microbiology serves me correctly, the variance in HIV has more to do with the super error-prone reverse transcription process than it does with the virus actually trying to evade destruction. Transcribing DNA from RNA also requires elements of the host cell, which can vary from person to person, and there is no error checking done at all.