Abstract
Copyright: © 2012 Van Regenmortel MHV. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Since 1987, more than 30 candidate HIV-1 vaccines have advanced to human clinical trials, of which some were large-scale phase IIb and III trials [1-3]. Of all these trials, only the Thai Phase III RV144 trial, based on a recombinant canarypox-HIV vector prime and recombinant HIV-1 envelope gp120 subunit protein, showed modest protection against HIV-1 infection [4]. This result came as a surprise because the RV144 trial, which had initially been fiercely condemned as illconceived and unjustified [5-7], instilled a new feeling of optimism into the field, because it suggested that developing a preventive HIV-1 vaccine may after all be feasible. Three years later, it seems appropriate to devote a special issue of the Journal of AIDS and Clinical Research to review what progress has been made in the search for a preventive HIV-1 vaccine.
Highlights
In their discussion of these results, Kong and Sattentau suggest that the failure of the engineered epitope mimics to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies could be due to their insufficient immunodominance, to an inadequate mimicry of the tertiary and quaternary structure present in native Env or because the epitopes possessed a low affinity for the germline B cell receptors (BCRs) present in the immunized hosts
The second contribution by Jason Okulicz is entitled “Elite controllers and long-term nonprogressors: models in HIV vaccine development”. It reviews the characteristics of these two groups of HIVinfected individuals and discusses the issues related to their potential use as models for HIV vaccine design
Long-term nonprogressors (LTNP) are somewhat more common and showed a prolonged elevation in CD4+ cell counts in the absence of antiretroviral therapy (ART) [31]. Both elite controllers and LTNPs exhibit a high degree of heterogeneity with respect to host genetics, immunologic characteristics, rates of HIV disease progression and clinical outcomes
Summary
In their discussion of these results, Kong and Sattentau suggest that the failure of the engineered epitope mimics to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies could be due to their insufficient immunodominance, to an inadequate mimicry of the tertiary and quaternary structure present in native Env or because the epitopes possessed a low affinity for the germline B cell receptors (BCRs) present in the immunized hosts. It reviews the characteristics of these two groups of HIVinfected individuals and discusses the issues related to their potential use as models for HIV vaccine design.
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