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Challenges in Designing a
Vaccine to Prevent AIDS, continued
- HIV continually mutates and recombines. This may mean that a vaccine would need to protect the person against many strains of the virus. Vaccines against other viruses have only had to protect the person against one or a limited number of strains. The NIAID funds scientists to analyze the genes of the different strains of HIV through the HIV Variation Project and the HIV Sequence Database and Analysis Unit.
- HIV infects helper T cells, the immune cells that orchestrate the immune response. It is very difficult to design a vaccine that, to be effective, needs to activate the very cells that are infected by the virus.
- HIV can be transmitted as both free virus and in infected cells. This may mean that more than one form of immune response must be activated to protect the individual.
- Researchers do not know what constitutes an effective immune response to HIV. It might be antibodies, activated immune cells, perhaps a third immune response, or a combination of immune responses.
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