USE OF ACCESSORY GENE MUTANTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENUATED HIV VACCINES

因为导致艾滋病的病毒，人类免疫缺陷病毒 (HIV)，几乎总是致命的，发展减毒病毒 艾滋病疫苗提出了严肃的医学、科学和伦理 问题。例如，一个主要的担忧将是这种可能性，尽管 理论上说，减毒的艾滋病毒可能会回复到致病形式， 从而引发疾病。一种已经在猴子身上探索过的方法 艾滋病模型系统一直在通过删除一些 病毒复制不是必需的基因。我们是 对艾滋病毒采取这种方法，作为第一步，他们试图 确定这些基因在生命周期中如何发挥作用 病毒。 很明显，在未来，FDA将不得不评估其安全性， 几种HIV活疫苗的可行性和有效性，它是 很可能减毒的艾滋病毒将会在其中。因此，我们的工作将 直接协助此评估。此外，这些基因是 在任何减毒的艾滋病毒疫苗中可能被删除的也是他们自己 很可能成为未来治疗学的目标，因此我们在 他们的职能也将与这方面相关。

Because the virus that causes AIDS, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is almost always lethal, the development of attenuated virus vaccines for AIDS presents serious medical, scientific, and ethical issues. For example, a major concern would be the possibility, albeit theoretical, that an attenuated HIV may revert to a pathogenic form and thus cause disease. One approach that has been explored in the monkey model system for AIDS has been to attenuate the virus by deleting some of the genes not obligatorily required for virus replication. We are pursuing this approach for HIV, and as a first step are trying to determine how these genes are functioning during the life cycle of the virus. It is clear that in the future the FDA will have to assess the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of several live vaccines against HIV, and it is likely that attenuated HIV will be among them. Thus, our work will directly assist in this assessment. In addition, the genes that are likely to be deleted in any attenuated HIV vaccine are also themselves likely to be targets for future therapeutics, and therefore our work on their function will be pertinent to this aspect as well.