Characterisation of polymorphism in HIV-1 sequence: investigation of viral escape from HLA-restricted immune responses

虽然已经开发了用于治疗HIV感染的药物疗法，但最佳长期疗法的许多方面都存在问题。一个重要的原因是艾滋病病毒在不同的个体中是不同的，我们认为这在很大程度上是由于病毒可以逃脱个体对它的独特免疫反应的方式。艾滋病病毒已经被证明可以通过在感染过程中变异和进化来逃脱，但这种情况在每个人身上发生的性质和程度还不确定。这是设计有效的艾滋病毒疫苗的一个重要障碍。这项研究使用了一种新的方法来描述艾滋病毒在每个个体中独特的进化方式，并确定这些信息如何与随后的疾病严重程度，对治疗的反应和对疫苗接种的反应相关。这将使艾滋病病毒感染者能够得到更好的“个性化”治疗，并有助于设计有效的疫苗。

Although drug therapy has been developed for treatment of HIV infection, there are many aspects of optimal long-term therapy that are problematic. An important reason for this is that HIV disease is different in different individuals, and we believe this is in large part attributable to the way in which the virus can escape an individual's unique immune responses against it. HIV has been shown to escape by mutating and evolving during infection, but the nature and extent to which this occurs in everyone is not established. This is an important barrier to the design of effective vaccines against HIV. This study uses a novel method to describe the ways that HIV evolves uniquely in every individual, and to determine how this information relates to subsequent disease severity, response to therapy and response to vaccination. This will allow HIV infected patients to have better 'individualised' therapy as well as help in the design of effective vaccines.