Scientists develop experimental vaccine to prevent HIV

Scientists have developed a novel vaccine candidate that may prevent HIV infection by stimulating an immune response against sugars that form a protective shield around the virus.

"An obstacle to creating an effective HIV vaccine is the difficulty of getting the immune system to generate antibodies against the sugar shield of multiple HIV strains," said Lai-Xi Wang, a professor at University of Maryland in the US.

"Our method addresses this problem by designing a vaccine component that mimics a protein-sugar part of this shield," said Wang.

Researchers designed a vaccine candidate using an HIV protein fragment linked to a sugar group. When injected into rabbits, the vaccine candidate stimulated antibody responses against the sugar shield in four different HIV strains.

The protein fragment of the vaccine candidate comes from gp120, a protein that covers HIV like a protective envelope.

A sugar shield covers the gp120 envelope, bolstering HIV's defenses. The rare HIV-infected individuals who can keep the virus at bay without medication typically have antibodies that attack gp120.

Researchers have tried to create an HIV vaccine targeting gp120, but had little success as the sugar shield on HIV resembles sugars found in the human body and therefore does not stimulate a strong immune response.
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