HIV vaccine that generates broadly neutralizing antibodies passes first safety and proof-of-concept study in humans

Scientists are engineering vaccines that turn cells into antibody factories The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2020) heard this week how scientists had, for the first time, devised a vaccine that induced human cells to generate broadly neutralising antibodies to HIV. The presentation, by Dr Joseph Casazza, of the US National Institutes of Health, may highlight an important step forwards towards a vaccine that could work both for HIV prevention and HIV treatment. About HIV, antibodies and bNAbs Most vaccines work by inducing the B-cells of the immune system to make antibodies against the infection that the vaccine mimics. Antibodies are an extraordinarily variable set of soluble protein molecules that attack pathogens and either destroy them directly, or ‘tag’ infected cells so they can be destroyed by other parts of the immune system. So far, however, the results for HIV vaccines have been disappointing. Although we have learned through trials that some HIV...