CAMELIA BHATTACHARYYA, AMITY UNIVERSITY KOLKATA
HIV or Human Immunodeficiency virus was first discovered in the early 1980s. It later became an epidemic and it still scares people since there’s still no vaccine known to protect us against it. Does that mean that the scientists and researchers are not trying to even make one? Well no. Since the 1980s there have been a number of studies conducted to fight against AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), starting from ART (Antiretroviral Therapy), the most effective one to date and different ways to treat patients even with modifications in the dosage and application of ART. But then these are not a lifetime cure and a person with controlled HIV is still capable of transmitting the virus through sexual intercourse, blood transfusion, etc. So what’s the way out of this difficulty now? Though not totally accepted, and is recommended to undergo more studies, yet a bit of light of hope has been shown by a recent study conducted by Murakowski and his teammates.
The HIV virus has a high rate of mutation which holds researchers from making a vaccine; a single vaccine can’t fight against all these new strains. Also, the proteome of the entire virus when used on vectors was not found to be that useful. Thus, only a part of the HIV proteome was used to make a single long peptide immunogen. This was inserted in adenovirus vectors. These when tested on Macaques, gave amazing results. These vaccines seem to weaken the mutated strains of the virus, thus making the new strain less lethal on the host. The T-cell responses weaken the fitness level in the virus thus affecting the succeeding viral generations, all of which keep targeting the selected regions provided in the single long peptide immunogen for the loss in its fitness. This study confirms that a vaccine for HIV is now possible and further experimentation would bring a chance to cure AIDS forever by vaccinating humans. Hope this experiment goes a long way without restricting its study only on Macaques and homo sapiens win over a microorganism yet again with the help of the weapon called “application of scientific knowledge”.
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Source: D.K. Murakowski, J.P. Barton, L. Peter, A. Chandrashekar, E. Bondzie, A. Gao, D.H. Barouch, and A.K. Chakraborty. “Adenovirus-vectored vaccine containing multidimensionally conserved parts of the HIV proteome is immunogenic in rhesus macaques”. PNAS February 2, 2021 118 (5) e2022496118; doi:10.1073/pnas.2022496118
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