For a very long time, scientists from all over the world trying to find a way to defeat the insidious HIV has already claimed many lives. A group of experts from the research center of Scripps Research (USA) the last 20 years developing a vaccine against a dangerous virus recently, an experimental drug has passed the first test and showed high efficiency when used on primates, protecting the animals from infection.
As reported in the journal Immunity, the authors used the following approach: the immune system needs to be trained to work with the virus and produce antibodies, which “beat” would be in vulnerabilities to HIV. In fact, it sounds simple, but in reality it is a real problem. To achieve the result scientists have been working on the immune system protein shell of the virus with the structure of the trimmer. But for a long time experts could not ensure that the protein was stable and was only successful a few years ago.
Further, based on stable protein structure was created the vaccine that had been tested in nonhuman primates of the genus macaques. Researchers took 3 groups of animals: 6 with a low titer of neutralizing antibodies, 6 — high and 12 were not vaccinated and acted as a control group. After that, animals introduced a special version of HIV that can infect animals, which contains the same protein structure, which was developed by the vaccine. This same protein is included in the composition of the human variant of HIV. It turned out that the vaccine worked on animals, initially had high titer neutralizing antibodies. Other primates have been infected.
Scientists realized that it stimulated the immune system of neutralizing antibodies was able to protect animals from the virus. This differs from many other studies that aimed at improving T-cell immune system.
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