HIV Vaccine Candidate Prompts Immune Response in Early Human Trials
An experimental vaccine designed to prevent HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) has produced promising results in a preliminary study involving a small group of volunteers. The vaccine candidate showed success in stimulating production of rare immune cells needed to start the process of generating antibodies against the fast-mutating virus.As detailed December 2 in the journal Science, the treatment produced a broad neutralizing antibody response in 35 of 36 (97 percent) of recipients who received two vaccine doses eight weeks apart.“With our many collaborators on the study team, we showed that vaccines can be designed to stimulate rare immune cells with specific properties, and this targeted stimulation can be very efficient in humans,” said William Schief, PhD, a study author and immunologist at Scripps Research, in La Jolla, California, in a press…