Race to Develop an Inclusive HIV Vaccine!

Amsterdam UMC, with the leadership of Rogier Sanders and a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is at the forefront of a global project to develop a practical HIV vaccine (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Priming, Shaping and Polishing: In search of a HIV Vaccine

Go to source). This would help address the significant impact of the virus in Low and Middle-Income Countries as there is no vaccine against the world's second most deadly infection — HIV, after TB.

Globally, approximately 40 million individuals are living with HIV, with two-thirds of this population located on the African continent. In the year 2022, over 600,000 people succumbed to HIV-related causes, while more than 1.3 million new infections were reported.

"We hope to be able to develop a preventative vaccine by designing and testing immunogens that will induce neutralizing antibodies. So far, no one has managed this,” says Sanders, Professor of Virology at Amsterdam UMC.

Developing an HIV vaccine has proven, so far, impossible but in Sanders' view there are reasons to be positive. “There’s quite a lot of optimism at the moment in the HIV vaccine field because of developments in early-phase research. There are quite some positive results from several Phase I studies on trying to induce broadly neutralizing antibodies,” Sanders explains.

“All the vaccines that failed so far have not been able to induce neutralizing antibodies, let alone broadly neutralizing antibodies. But there’s very nice progress compared to these earlier studies.”

Global Endeavor Towards a Safer Tomorrow

His team, consisting of researchers from Stanford University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and the University of Louisiana, aim to build on this 'nice progress' by developing a vaccine that specifically targets rare immune cells that are capable of making antibodies that neutralize the virus.

Known as 'Germline Targeting', this process guides the immune system by activating immune cells that have the potential to grow and produce antibodies that react against an HIV infection.

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This process has already been shown to work, in a study published but another research team in Science, earlier this year.

Sanders’ team is also currently busy with their study in search of a vaccine that can stimulate immune cells into producing antibodies.

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The next step is to develop ways of boosting immune response, through a process known as 'priming, shaping and polishing,' where these cells are then guided through a development process so that they can ultimately produce stronger and broader antibodies.

"Think of the human immune cells in terms of a youth football team. First, the germline-targeting vaccine scouts and recruits the talents from this youth team, then once the right cells have been primed, through multiple phases of training, the shaping and polishing of vaccines, the talented players are eventually shaped into world-class football players,” says Sanders.

This process may ultimately lead to an immune response that is strong enough to repel an HIV infection and, thus, a fully functioning vaccine.

Amsterdam UMC may Help Combat HIV

While this sounds simple, the hunt for an HIV vaccine has puzzled virologists. Since the 1980s, there has still not been a successful phase III study among a large group of subjects.

This is mainly due to the unusual properties of HIV. "There are so many things to consider," Sanders explains.

"There are a number of reasons why it is so difficult to make a vaccine and one of them is the diversity of the virus. A second difficulty lies in the structural or chemical properties of the protein that surrounds the virus, which is crucial for vaccines."

Sanders' team recently took an important step forward with a 'priming' vaccine that was tested in a phase I study in test subjects in New York, Washington, and Amsterdam (at Amsterdam UMC).

"We are hopeful that we will eventually succeed in developing an effective vaccine against the many variants of HIV. Hopefully, that will put an end to the ongoing misery that the virus brings," Sanders says.

Reference:

1. Priming, Shaping and Polishing: In search of a HIV Vaccine - (https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/spotlight/priming-shaping-and-polishing-in-search-of-a-hiv-vaccine.htm)

Source-Eurekalert