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Can a 'universal' HIV-1 vaccine be developed? AIDScience.com describes current research strategies

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) "is much like a language that is a collection of dialects," an article on the new AIDScience.com web site points out: "Some words and phrases are conserved across the languages." Yet, global communication across all dialects would be "less than perfect."

Similarly, some researchers fear that vaccinations designed to target a single HIV-1 strain wouldn't offer sufficient protection from all versions of the virus.

Vaccines based on the viral forms most common in the United States and Europe--namely, a subtype called clade B--might prove useless for fighting the HIV-1 strains found in other parts of the world such as Africa.

What are the prospects for developing a "universal" HIV-1 vaccine, capable of fighting all clades of the virus, and what's the best research strategy? One perspective on these questions is presented today at the web site, AIDScience.com

Researcher Anne S. De Groot offers an optimistic viewpoint in a peer-reviewed research review article: New bioinformatics tools--which use computer power to analyze genetic sequence information--are now at hand to support a universal or "cross-clade" vaccine, says De Groot, a Brown University scientist.

To create a broadly effective vaccine, De Groot contends, researchers must identify regions of HIV-1's genetic sequence that stimulate immune response universally-or, across all versions of the virus. After all, she says, "Just as there may be certain words that are conserved in all dialects of French, there may be a set of epitopes that are conserved across all strains and clades of HIV."

But, analyzing all known HIV-1 sequences to locate universally important segments is no small task: Public databases now include more than 44,000 HIV-1 protein sequences, and the virus is constantly mutating and recombining. Fortunately, the AIDScience.com article notes, several computer-based algorithms are now on hand to help researchers pinpoint important bits of genetic sequence common to various HIV-1 strains.

More than a dozen HIV-1 vaccines have been studied in clinical trials, most based on clade B strains. Some researchers have pointed out, however, that vaccines based on clade B have been found to induce an immune-system response to other versions of the virus. These findings have raised questions about whether it would be better to modify existing vaccines, or to start anew on a so-called "world-clade" vaccine.

Such questions will be the subject of academic debate on AIDScience.com, a centralized online source of information on all aspects of AIDS prevention. The new venture is being launched by the American Association for the Advancement Science, through its AAAS Science Publications (ASP) branch.

Supported by an $850,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), AIDScience.com is designed to serve AIDS prevention and vaccine researchers. Site content will include original, peer-reviewed research reports and review articles, as well as news features and information resources for scientists.

Contributing to a reduction in the incidence of AIDS worldwide will be the goal of the new web site, says Ellis Rubinstein, editor of Science, the leading weekly research journal published by the AAAS. "Our objective is to provide AIDS prevention scientists with the most current and rigorous data available on new research strategies," he adds.

The research-based AIDScience.com site is being launched in collaboration with the HIVInSite, a sister site geared toward the general public. HIVInSite is maintained jointly by the University of California San Francisco AIDS Research Institute's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies and the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital, which cares for about one-third of the city's HIV-infected patients.

Media Note: Please see AIDScience.com

Radio Journalists: A 60-second segment is available.

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