The Impact of T Cell Immunity on HIV-1 Diversity

尽管进行了深入的研究，但仍然没有有效的艾滋病毒疫苗。最近，国际社会呼吁暂停疫苗临床试验，集中精力研究决定疫苗如何以及为什么会成功的潜在分子生物学。该项目旨在解决这些基本问题。艾滋病毒具有适应环境的能力，这种能力在任何其他生物体中都是前所未有的。这反映在对抗病毒药物的耐药性的迅速发展以及将病毒从免疫系统中伪装出来的突变的发展上。该项目将展示在新感染的HIV阳性个体中，已传播的病毒如何适应新宿主免疫系统的关键组成部分，并同时恢复在感染前一宿主期间获得的许多突变。随着病人逐渐发展为艾滋病，我们希望展示免疫系统如何不再能够对病毒施加任何选择压力。我们将探索我们免疫系统的关键组成部分，看看适应一种病毒是否会对其他病毒不利。如果是这样的话，病毒进化对我们免疫系统功效的影响可能比我们意识到的更重要。

Despite intensive research there is still no effective HIV vaccine. There has been a recent international call to suspend clinical vaccine trials and to concentrate on the underlying molecular biology that determines how and why a vaccine might succeed. This project aims to address these fundamental issues.HIV has the ability to adapt to its environment in a manner unprecedented in any other organism. This is reflected by the rapid development of resistance to antiviral drugs and by the development of mutations that camouflage the virus from the immune system. This project will demonstrate how, in a population of newly infected HIV positive individuals, the virus that has been transmitted will adapt to a key component of the immune system of the new host and simultaneously revert many of the mutations acquired during infection of the previous host. As patients progress to AIDS we hope to show how the immune system is no longer able to exert any selection pressure on the virus.We will explore the key components of our immune system to see whether adaptation to one may be disadvantageous to others. If so, the impact of viral evolution on the efficacy of our immune system may be more significant than realised.