New Insight into HIV Vaccine Discovered

The first and only study to look at isolate HIV-neutralizing antibodies from infants has found that novel antibodies that could protect against many variants of HIV can be produced relatively quickly after infection compared to adults. This suggests that various aspects of HIV-vaccine development, from design to administration, could be improved by mimicking infection and immune response in infants.

The team drew on samples taken from infants in Nairobi born to HIV-positive mothers prior to the advent of antiretroviral drugs.

Infants can produce broadly neutralizing antibodies within the first year of HIV infection, requiring much less somatic hypermutation to generate a broadly neutralizing antibody than would be expected in adults. Additionally, this antibody response is not dominated by just a single antibody, but it appears to be polyclonal, which may make it harder to evade.

Scientists study this pattern of antibody formation in infants and consider mimicking it using a vaccine to provide cover for adults from HIV.

The findings demonstrate that key differences in the infant immune response to HIV, or the viruses transmitted to infants, could shed light on ways to improve HIV vaccine design.

Journal reference:
Cassandra A. Simonich et al. HIV-1 Neutralizing Antibodies with Limited Hypermutation from an Infant. Cell, June 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.05.055