New mouse model technology could speed the search for an AIDS vaccine

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a technology to quickly generate mouse models for testing and tweaking potential HIV vaccines. Such models could speed up the quest for the AIDS field’s “holy grail”– a vaccine that elicits broadly neutralizing antibodies able to fight any mutant HIV strain. Findings have been published September 8 in the journal Cell. HIV frequently changes its coat protein, eluding the human immune system’s efforts to neutralize it. While a handful of HIV-infected people can produce broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies, this usually results from years of exposure to the virus, allowing the immune system to modify antibodies to catch up with viral changes. People first make precursor antibodies, which then mature via mutation and natural selection, becoming more protective over time. “This is a long-term process, involving many intermediate antibodies, making it very challenging to design HIV vaccines to protect uninfected individuals,” says Frederick Alt, PhD, director...