NewScientist: HIV vaccine turns muscle into antibody factories [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227094.700-hiv-vaccine-turns-muscle-into-antibody-factories.html]
By injecting a different virus into muscle tissue, scientists seem to have created a new approach to attacking HIV: rather than simply prime the immune system against infection in the traditional sense, muscle cells are induced into producing an antibody that can attack the viruses.
As a consequence, rather than participate in a futile arms race against a virus that can adapt to anything the immune system throws at it, the "modified" muscle cells can produce immunoadhesins unmolested.
So far, the principle has been tested on monkeys with SIV with notable success - none of the macaques has suffered infection after been "vaccinated" and subsequently exposed to SIV whereas two thirds of the macaques that did not receive the vaccine died of monkey AIDS.
It remains to be seen whether this will eventually be something else the virus adapts to, but so far things are looking good.
You can read the actual paper here. [http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.1967.html] However, unless you have or are prepared to give Nature some of your money then you won't be able to read more than the abstract.
By injecting a different virus into muscle tissue, scientists seem to have created a new approach to attacking HIV: rather than simply prime the immune system against infection in the traditional sense, muscle cells are induced into producing an antibody that can attack the viruses.
As a consequence, rather than participate in a futile arms race against a virus that can adapt to anything the immune system throws at it, the "modified" muscle cells can produce immunoadhesins unmolested.
So far, the principle has been tested on monkeys with SIV with notable success - none of the macaques has suffered infection after been "vaccinated" and subsequently exposed to SIV whereas two thirds of the macaques that did not receive the vaccine died of monkey AIDS.
It remains to be seen whether this will eventually be something else the virus adapts to, but so far things are looking good.
You can read the actual paper here. [http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.1967.html] However, unless you have or are prepared to give Nature some of your money then you won't be able to read more than the abstract.
