GoKawiilHighlights: Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, Scripps Research have developed an HIV vaccine that trains immune cells to see past HIV’s defenses.
This HIV vaccine works by prompting the body’s immune system to make substantial numbers of rarely seen “broadly neutralizing” antibodies.
In this new study, this vaccine resulted in the best HIV-fighting antibody response ever seen in primates. Human trials have now started.
LJI Professor and Chief Scientific Officer Shane Crotty, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, CA—A new HIV vaccine developed by La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), Scripps Research scientists, and IAVI has the potential to protect humans from developing HIV infection and AIDS. This HIV vaccine is the first to generate a high number of “broadly neutralizing,” virus-fighting antibodies in primates.
“This feels like a huge success,” says LJI Professor and Chief Scientific Officer Shane Crotty, Ph.D., who co-led the research with Scripps Research Professor William Schief, Ph.D. “We constructed a successful vaccine from the ground up, which required a deep understanding of the immune system.”
This groundbreaking research, published in Nature, is the result of 14 years of collaboration between La Jolla Institute for Immunology and Scripps Research, as part of the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD). “This has been one of those Apollo moon mission-type projects, where there is an exceptional goal and the team has to accomplish a myriad of discoveries and inventions along the way,” says Crotty.
Outsmarting HIV
The new vaccine works by intervening in a process called B cell maturation. B cells make antibodies. Like many immune cells, B cells have an early “naive” stage before they are ready to make antibodies. B cells start to mature once they get the signal that a pathogen, such as a virus, is trying to attack. B cells see pieces of that pathogen’s molecular structure and start producing antibodies that can bind to that structure and halt infection.
It can take a little while for B cells to find the right “bullseye” on a pathogen. But B cells keep trying. As they mature, B cells tweak their antibody production, refining antibody structures to bind to a pathogen in just the right, vulnerable spots.
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