Researchers have found a amazing breakthrough in the HIV/AIDs virus. Long thought to be a death sentence for those whom contracted the virus, but researchers led by Barton Haynes, director of the Duke University Human Vaccine Institute at Duke University School of Medicine have come up with a fascinating way to possible save millions of lives.Though the Immune system immediately generates antibodies designed to attach to and destroy HIV. And for the first few weeks, these antibodies are successful, eliminating all but a few viruses that remain hidden away from the body's surveillance systems. The hidden virus escapes from being neutralized by the immune fighting antibodies by mutating, which makes it undetectable for the antibodies who are seeking out the previous virus. After the mutated virus restarts to unleash this new mutated wave of virus throughout the body, which ultimately increasingly produce more HIV virus than immune fighting antibodies causing the human body to lose its fight. The researchers have carefully mapped at which stages the virus mutates and the resulting antibodies form against them from an African patient whom is able to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies. Haynes and his colleagues have come up with a way to bring out the HIV Fighting immune cells.
"We followed individuals from the time of HIV infection to the time they generated broadly neutralizing antibodies, and mapped and isolated the virus at every step along the way so we now don't have to guess any more about what induced those antibodies," he says. "We have a map on how to recreate the sequential (versions of HIV) that could drive particular antibody lineages."Usually the broadly neutralizing antibodies appeared about 14 weeks after infection, and these were better able to bind to portions of HIV that the virus doesn't change as quickly or as frequently. That makes the antibodies useful weapons in attacking the virus' Achilles heel, and a potentially powerful target for an effective vaccine. A vaccine would have to generally cover several types of these broadly neutralizing antibodies since each person make their on unique variation of the antibodies.
"The hope is that by mapping individual pathways to generating broadly neutralizing antibodies, we can find some commonalities among people even though everyone is different, and that gives us hope for using these pathways in a vaccine," says Haynes. "It's a huge effort but it looks like it's going to pay off."
*Cleo foresees a cure in the Pipeline in the next 2 years, but wonders about the super FLU's and Cold's that have been appearing in the recent year or so.
