THE ROLE OF VACCINE PERSISTENCE IN PROTECTION CONFERRED BY LIVE ATTENUATED SIV

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The World Health Organisation recognises HIV/AIDS as the number one infectious disease in the world. Doctors and scientists know that the best way to stop this disease would be to develop a vaccine to stop the 14,000 new infections with AIDS virus that occur each day worldwide. The difficulty is that scientists do not know whether an AIDS vaccine needs to stimulate the production of antibodies, molecules in the blood that recognise the virus and stop it from infecting new cells or killer T cells that eliminate virus infected cells before the infection spreads further. Alternatively the vaccine may need to do something different to be fully effective. The team at NIBSC are studying an animal model of HIV and have found that animals vaccinated with a disabled form of the virus first are resistant to disease causing strains. They are collaborating with scientists in Amsterdam who have a genetically engineered AIDS virus that can only grow if it is given a special drug. The team at NIBSC will use this new virus to understand how the disabled AIDS virus works as a vaccine. That information will put us one step closer to the vaccine that the world desperately needs.