US Researchers Close to Discovering Strong Anti-HIV Vaccine

Researchers in the United States have identified two powerful antibodies that are strong enough to neutralise more than 90 per cent of all known HIV strains.

Photo: US Researchers Close to Discovering Strong Anti-HIV Vaccine

In the search for ways to beat HIV/AIDS, researchers have more often than not been thwarted by the viruses' ability to mutate, but scientists led by a team at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases believe they have managed to solve the problem, ABC Online informs.

"Knowing that it's possible for a human to make this kind of antibody really increases our optimism that it could be elicited by a vaccine," says Gary Nabel, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland, who is a co-author on the two new Science papers.

The results have been exciting, Weiss adds, because they address lingering concerns that antibodies against HIV-1 may need to be very specific — targeting only a few strains — if they are to be potent. "Our overall thinking has changed in light of these recent papers," he says, Nature.com reports.