Discovery might help develop HIV vaccine.

[Óttar]

(July 8) -- American scientists are touting a major stride toward a vaccine that can ward off HIV, after finding two key proteins that neutralize 91 percent of the virus' 190 strains.

The team of researchers with the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center hopes the antibody discovery can spur successful work toward a method of preventing HIV, which already afflicts an estimated 33 million people worldwide.

The discovery, published in this week's Science, is courtesy of Donor 45, an unidentified African-American man whose body produced the antibodies, called VRC01 and VRC02.

This image shows the atomic structure of the antibody VRC01 (blue and green) binding to HIV (grey and red). The precise site of VRC01-HIV binding (red) is a subset of the area of viral attachment to the primary immune cells HIV infects.
NIAID VRC
This image shows the antibody VRCO1, pictured in blue and green, binding to HIV, colored gray and red.
Scientists have already identified the 12 cells in his body that produced the proteins. If they can harness the mechanisms by which the antibodies were made, they might be able to create a vaccine that would spur anybody's body to make the HIV destroyers.

"We're going to be at this for a while," Gary Nabel, director of the center and a leader on this research, told The Wall Street Journal.

The last few years has seen a flurry of effort -- much of it futile -- toward creating a vaccine for HIV, much like those that helped eradicate small pox and polio. Until now, however, single antibodies only appeared to block one or two HIV strains.

Trials on the first promising vaccine, AIDSVAX, were largely a disappointment. In American and Thai trials, the vaccine yielded success rates that varied from statistically insignificant to 30 percent.

In this case, researchers seem to have found a sweet spot on the surface of the human immunodeficiency virus.

"The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains," Dr. John Mascola, one of the study's researchers, said in a statement.

Turning these newly discovered antibodies into a useful HIV vaccine remains a tall order. Scientists would need to isolate the specific part of the virus that the antibodies latch onto, then craft a vaccine using that viral snippet to train the body to produce VRC01 and VRC02.

"It's an important step in the right direction of adding a degree of precision to vaccine development," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC News. "But there's no way to tell when a vaccine could happen."

Now that scientists have a better understanding of the actual virus, and areas on its surface that appear vulnerable, new tactics in treating HIV/AIDS might also be an area for further research.

"In infected people, we may be looking at it in combination with medication and determine whether you can get more effective control of the virus and suppress it down to low levels," Nabel said. "The hope would be that we could suppress the virus and increase life span and improve quality of life."

http://www.aolnews.com/health/articl...ccine/19547029

[The Lawspeaker]

That's very good news. Now.. let's keep a future vaccine in the hands of the West (including Russia), China and some more Asian countries.
For Africa and the like: let nature run it's course.

[Wyn]

That's very good news. Now.. let's keep a future vaccine in the hands of the West (including Russia), China and some more Asian countries.
For Africa and the like: let nature run it's course.

You can't be serious?

[The Lawspeaker]

You can't be serious?

As a matter of fact I am serious. Just look at the numbers. We Europeans are already going to get swamped and we are already a minority.
This is about our own survival.

[Vasconcelos]

Closing borders for some people is a better way than just letting them fuck to death.

[Baron Samedi]

As a matter of fact I am serious. Just look at the numbers. We Europeans are already going to get swamped and we are already a minority.
This is about our own survival.

I'm wondering if any of you are human being sometimes.

Seriously? Children don't deserve to suffer like that.... It's not their fault that they are fucking by-products of rape in a land torn apart by the West's imperialism.....

And just think, I'm left-hand/Luciferian and I say shit like this..... What does that mean for the rest of you?

[The Lawspeaker]

I'm wondering if any of you are human being sometimes.

Morality is not even important here. Simple mathemathics will do.
1. We are with less 2. They are with more. 3. They want us dead. 4. Not all of them will die. Conclusion: why should we give a damn about people that are with more and that want us dead, buried and extinct anyways ?

It's not their fault that they are fucking by-products of rape in a land torn apart by the West's imperialism.....

They should be over that by now. We left 50 years ago. One can't live off past "glory" for ever. They have the resources and the manpower. They could have been richer then we are and whatever they do to each other is not our problem.

If we wouldn't have been throwing them money and neglecting our own poor and infirm then nature would have taken it's course and the African situation would have LONG BEEN RESOLVED by now.
And I say nature because there are people that immune to the HIV AIDS virus in Africa as well.

[The Khagan]

Saying that Western Imperialism fucked over the entirety of the African continent is an overstatement at best. If anything it was more like beating a corpse. While still greatly damaging, it was the fact of geographic determinism that truly did in Africa.

[nisse]

That's very good news. Now.. let's keep a future vaccine in the hands of the West (including Russia), China and some more Asian countries.
For Africa and the like: let nature run it's course.

Let nature run its course everywhere. It's a vaccine, not a cure - i.e. preventitive. Think of who will be getting this - people who are not responsible enough to use methods already available to us all....I support negative selection for that trait. Plus, if HIV won't get them something else will. Syphillis, for example, is no walk in the park.

Seriously? Children don't deserve to suffer like that....

Suffer like what? HIV isn't *painful*...no worse then them dying of starvation or diarrhea (which they routinely do).

Plus, there are lots of drugs on the market that prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus (and do it well) already. Having a vaccine would change nothing. It would actually be a lot more difficult to treat unborn babies with it (so if you give the "children" the vaccine, you better send off some doctors and expensive medical equipment).

I hate it when people yell "oh think of the children" and don't actually bother to think in the first place.


I think an HIV vaccine is a waste of money and woudn't do anyone any good. HIV's a pretty cool problem to try and solve though.

[Megrez]

And just think, I'm left-hand/Luciferian and I say shit like this..... What does that mean for the rest of you?

That means you are not Left-hand/Luciferian.