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In one of the most important medical breakthroughs, scientists have given hope for an effective AIDS vaccine. They have demonstrated the binding action of two healthy antibodies that combine to block the entry of the HIV virus into healthy cells.
The scientists studied 2F5 and 4E10, the two powerful antibodies against HIV, which neutralise antibodies, in the sense that they can block different strains of the HIV virus.
They achieve that by binding to a part of the outer protein coating next to viral membrane that opens up and is exposed to the antibodies for some minutes during the process of cell fusion and infection.
But the difficulty in controlling the infection is that such antibodies are rare in HIV infection and the present experimental vaccines have been unable to produce such antibodies.
"Unless the antibody is very close by and ready to home in on it, it won't work. That means our goal has to be the creation of a vaccine that can induce a whole lot more of these antibodies and have them ready to go at the earliest moment of infection," lead scientist S Munir Alam of the Duke University Medical Center said.
The 2F5 and 4E10 antibodies have unusually long and loopy protein sections that are hydrophobic.
"This two-step mechanism, not previously appreciated, might extend to antibodies that protect against other virus," said team member Stephen Harrison of Harvard Medical School.
The research team is designing a vaccine that integrates a lipid component.
The findings have been published in the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' Journal.
