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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."
Some of it probably will eventually, but they can probably cure or prevent the spread of at least a decent percentage of people.
So it's a win for the medical community and human race in general either way.
The region that doesn't change is the binding site. If that changes the virus will likely be much less effective at binding onto immune cells. If it can't target immune cells anymore, it becomes much less scary.
No. You're drastically reducing the number of possible infections. 90% of exposures would be immunized against.
I'm pretty ok with people getting money for doing something valuable. I was happy when Linus became a millionaire, I'll be happy if the people who invent an AIDS vaccine become millionaires. Other people having money doesn't reduce my happiness one bit, and when they get it for doing something awesome, it increases my happiness.
Qxe4