Immune Responses Provide Clues for HIV Vaccine Development

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Recent research has yielded new information about immune responses associated with—and potentially responsible for—protection from HIV infection, providing leads for new strategies to develop an HIV vaccine. Results from the RV144 trial, reported in 2009, provided the first signal of HIV vaccine efficacy: a 31 percent reduction in HIV infection among vaccinees. Since then, an international research consortium has been searching for molecular clues to explain why the vaccine showed this modest protective effect.

A new review outlines findings that hint at the types of immune responses a preventive HIV vaccine may need to induce. The article was co-authored by leaders in HIV vaccinology, including Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and lead author Lawrence Corey, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.