Humoral immunity to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

在艾滋病毒和艾滋病的检测和治疗方面已经取得了很大进展，但预防艾滋病毒感染的有效和安全的疫苗仍然需要很多年的时间。我们的研究旨在将这一天提前：首先，为了更好地为对艾滋病毒的免疫反应的体液臂奠定基础，我们将确定艾滋病毒外膜上的识别特征，它将诱导出预防艾滋病毒感染的抗体。这将通过从大羊驼血液样本中克隆的抗体片段来完成，因为它们在分析工作中具有特殊的优势。其次，我们将研究可能产生相反效果的抗体，它会增强感染，而不是预防感染。从接种了测试疫苗的人类志愿者身上采集的血液样本将被分析，以确定是否可以改变保护性抗体和感染增强抗体之间的平衡，从而使对艾滋病毒的保护成为主导。保护性抗体片段也将被探索作为未来可能的杀微生物剂，可以被引入阴道，以减少性交期间和性交后感染的风险。

Great advances have been made in the detection and treatment of HIV and AIDS, but a vaccine to prevent HIV infection, one that works and is safe, still lies many years away. Our research aims to bring this day forward: First, to gain a better groundwork for the humoral arm of the immune response to HIV, we shall determine recognition signatures on the outer envelope of HIV which will induce antibodies that protect against HIV infection. This will be done with antibody fragments cloned from blood samples of llamas because they have particular advantages for analytical work. Second, we will study antibodies that may have the opposite effect, enhancing infection rather than protecting against it. Blood samples taken from human volunteers who have given a test vaccine will be analysed to see if the balance between protective antibodies and infection-enhancing antibodies can be shifted so that protection from HIV becomes dominant. Protective antibody fragments will also be explored for future use as possible microbicides that can be introduced into the vagina to reduce the risk of infection during and after sexual intercourse.