Progress on AIDS vaccine

[Bonam]

Seems researchers are finally making some inroads on creating a vaccine for AIDS:

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/07/09/hiv-aids-vaccine-antibodies.html?ref=rss

Excerpts:

The antibodies work against about 90 per cent of all of the viruses we tested," said Dr. John Mascola, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center, part of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which led the study.

Excerpts:

Mascola said his team has already begun to design components for a candidate vaccine that could teach the human immune system to make antibodies similar to VRC01 and VRC02 that might prevent infection by the vast majority of HIV strains worldwide.

Testing would begin in small lab animals, then in non-human primates like macaques that can become infected with a simian form of the virus. If the animal results are positive, the next step would be to test the vaccine in humans. Such a trial would likely not occur for two or three years, he said.

[Remiel]

That is certainly a very hopeful first step. After that, hopefully they will be able to find a way to combat the other 10%. I just checked the numbers on Wikipedia, and elimination 90% of AIDs in Africa would still leave them with as many deaths per year as the entire rest of the world currently has from the virus. So, we can get AIDS down, but it won't be enough to put it out yet, by a fair bit.

[GostHacked]

That sounds like good news to me!

[segnosaur]

Its not the only potential AIDS treatment...

From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100703/hl_hsn/scientistsmakeimmunecellsinmicethatfightoffhiv;_ylt=AstI7KVsxtz8vkI_AvNQ7f4PLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNsYTIxYnRzBGFzc2V0A2hzbi8yMDEwMDcwMy9zY2llbnRpc3RzbWFrZWltbXVuZWNlbGxzaW5taWNldGhhdGZpZ2h0b2ZmaGl2BHBvcwMxMQRzZWMDeW5fY

...researchers engineered human stem cells -- cells that create other cells -- to lock a kind of "door" that allows HIV to enter.

...

The researchers inserted these tweaked stem cells into the humanized mice and other mice, then tried to infect them with HIV. According to the scientists, the genetically engineered stem cells went on to create mature immune system cells, such as T-cells, in the humanized mice. After a couple of weeks, these new immune cells appeared to provide protection against HIV.