Researchers have moved closer to develop a vaccine to guard against HIV infection, by targeting a vulnerable piece of the virus. Gail Ferstandig Arnold and Eddy Arnold, husband and wife duo and their team at Rutgers University are conducting the research. They had previously been able to elicit effective antibodies against a very limited number of HIV types.

 

In the research process, Arnolds have used the relatively innocuous cold-causing rhinovirus and attach the target portion of the HIV. This must be done in a way that maintains the HIV part's shape so that when the immune system sees it, it will actually mount an immune response as it would to the real HIV. They have been trying to identify a part of the AIDS-causing virus that is crucial to its viability and then target this Achilles' heel.

 

The part that the research team targeted plays a role in the ability of HIV to enter cells, and is common to most HIV varieties. So it would not be easy for the virus to reinvent on the fly. To actually accomplish this is a big problem in engineering. The goal was to take a small piece of the HIV out of its native context, put it in a completely different system (rhinovirus), and have it look the same and act the same. These findings were published in Virology.