Researchers discover molecule that may lead to successful HIV vaccine

Researchers have recently discovered a molecule that could someday lead to the creation of the world’s first Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) vaccine. The University of Maryland and Duke University researchers who conducted the study on rabbits, have designed a novel protein-sugar vaccine candidate that stimulated an immune response against sugars that form a protective shield around HIV. The results suggested that producing antibodies that directly target the defensive sugar shield is an important step in developing immunity against the target, and therefore, this is the first step in developing a truly effective vaccine. Researcher Lai-Xi Wang of the University of Maryland said an obstacle to create an effective HIV vaccine is the difficulty of getting the immune system to generate antibodies against the sugar shield of multiple HIV strains. “Our method addresses this problem by designing a vaccine component that mimics a protein-sugar part of this shield,” Wang added. The team designed a vaccine candidate...