An effective HIV vaccine has been notoriously hard to develop, in part due to the complexity and constant changes in Env, this retrovirus's envelope protein. In a recent paper published in Science Advances, scientists at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA described a new way to stabilize Env proteins in the desired shape and mount them on virus-like nanoparticles. Preclinical data showed that this new vaccine strategy elicited robust anti-HIV antibody responses in mice and rabbits; the team is currently further optimizing and testing the vaccine in macaque models.
Env proteins are expressed on the HIV envelope in trimers which significantly change shape when infecting a cell. By modifying the HR1 portion of Env, Assoc. Prof. Jiang Zhu and his team were able to stabilize the Env trimer in its pre-infection conformation, and apply them toward diverse HIV strains from around the world.
Read more at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181126105516.htm
- Arjun Kumar
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