A Weak Spot in H.I.V’s Armor Raises Hope for a Vaccine

The following is an excerpt of an article in:


The New York Times
Tuesday, October 30, 2012

A Weak Spot in H.I.V’s Armor Raises Hope for a Vaccine

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The search for a vaccine against AIDS has been long and fruitless — mostly because the virus mutates so fast.

As is well known, flu vaccines have to be reformulated every year because influenza viruses mutate so steadily. But the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, mutates as much in a single day as flu virus does in a year, presenting scientists with an almost insurmountable challenge.

This month, South African researchers announced that they had found a vulnerable spot on the virus’s outer shell that might present a good vaccine target, and that they had also learned, for the first time, at what stage of an infection it develops. They found only two women whose virus had the vulnerability — and it wasn’t the same virus that first infected them, but a mutant that developed a few months later.

The research, published by Nature Medicine on Oct. 21, was praised as “very interesting” by several AIDS experts.

“It’s a combination of good science and ‘Boy, did we get lucky,’ ” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “They had all these blood samples and virus samples.”

The researchers, led by Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, president of South Africa’s Medical Research Council and best known for pioneering work on vaginal microbicides, screened hundreds of blood samples given at regular intervals by 79 women who had been in earlier clinical trials at his Durban clinic and had become infected during the trials.

“What we have that’s unique,” Dr. Karim said, “is that for the first time, we understand how a person can make broadly neutralizing antibodies.”

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