NIAID media availability: New strategy proposed for designing antibody-based HIV vaccine

• Obtaining new broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV to expand the pool available for scientists to study
• Identifying regions on the surface of HIV that are vulnerable to broadly neutralizing antibodies and determining the atomic-level crystal structure of those regions
• Understanding how broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV evolve and persist
• Clarifying the structural differences between anti-HIV antibodies that do and do not have neutralizing properties
• Determining what quantity of broadly neutralizing antibodies an HIV vaccine must elicit to be effective
• Learning how anti-HIV neutralizing antibodies and HIV surface proteins evolve in response to one another in people who eventually produce a powerful neutralizing antibody response to the virus
• Clarifying how HIV surface proteins are presented to the immune cells that produce broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV
• Determining what immune-system conditions promote the production of broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies

ARTICLE: L Stamatatos et al. Neutralizing antibodies generated during natural HIV-1 infection: good news for an HIV-1 vaccine? Nature Medicine DOI 10.1038/nm.1949 (2009).

WHO: John R. Mascola, M.D., deputy director of NIAID's Vaccine Research Center, is available for comment.

CONTACT: To schedule interviews, please contact Laura Sivitz, 301-402-1663, .

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