HIV vaccine candidate’s mechanism revealed 20 years later

About two decades after first devising a new kind of vaccine, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) researchers are unlocking why it stops and ultimately clears the monkey form of HIV, called SIV, in about half of nonhuman primates – and why it’s a promising candidate to stop HIV in people. In scientific papers that were simultaneously published in the journals Science and Science Immunology, creators of the cytomegalovirus, or CMV, vaccine platform describe the unusual biological mechanisms through which it works. The findings also helped fine-tune VIR-1111, the CMV-based experimental vaccine against HIV that was developed at OHSU and is now being evaluated in a Phase 1 clinical trial. The trial is being conducted by Vir Biotechnology, which licensed the CMV vaccine platform technology from OHSU. “Knowing the mechanism that the CMV-based SIV vaccine uses to work in rhesus macaques gives us a way to judge the potential of a human vaccine...