Scientists discover antibodies that target holes in HIV's defenses
It appears that antibodies can target these holes, which are scattered in HIV's protective sugar or "glycan" shield, and the question is now whether these holes can be exploited to induce protective antibodies. "It's important now to evaluate future vaccine candidates to more rapidly understand the immune response they induce to particular glycan holes and learn from it," said TSRI Professor Dennis R. Burton, who is also scientific director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Neutralizing Antibody Center and of the National Institutes of Health's Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) at TSRI. The study, published recently in the journal Cell Reports , was co-led by Burton, TSRI Associate Professor Andrew Ward, also of CHAVI-ID, and Rogier W. Sanders of the University of Amsterdam and Cornell University. A Clue to Stopping HIV Every virus has a signature structure, like the architecture of a...