Genetic engineering against HIV

A new approach to HIV treatment has triggered an immune response in mice

Maria Krivochenko, Naked Science

One of the reasons why there is still no vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus is that the virus is constantly mutating. And this happens faster than the body has time to develop antibodies against its previous "version". Broad Spectrum Neutralizing Antibodies (bNAb) they can suppress viremia and protect against HIV infection, but they are difficult to remove.

In experiments on mice, a team from the American research center Scripps Research has developed a new approach to vaccination, which, presumably, will rely on genetically engineered immune cells in the human body. Details of the study are published in the journal Nature Communications (Huang et al., Vaccine elicitation of HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies from engineered B cells).

Scientists took mice whose humoral immunity system is similar to human. Genetically engineered b-cells were transferred into their bodies, and then an HIV vaccine was injected.

Animal observation has shown that injected b cells can multiply in response to vaccination and mature into memory cells and plasma cells that produce large amounts of antibodies to the virus over a long period of time. In addition, the genes responsible for the production of antibodies can be modified — and make HIV treatment even more effective.

"The new approach has helped to develop broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies in the body that can prevent HIV infection," said Dr. James Voss, a Scripps Research fellow and one of the authors of the study. According to him, this is the first time that genetically modified b cells have provoked a powerful immune response to the immunodeficiency virus in mice.

The authors of the development noted that the material for the production of a new vaccine can be easily obtained from human blood. Now the team is developing ways to make the technology accessible to most people. So far, this remains a problem, since cell therapy is quite expensive. "We are working hard to make this technology available — it can help in HIV prevention and detect standard antiviral therapy," Voss concluded.

He hopes that the described approach will be able to prevent the spread of HIV infection in the future and will help those who are already ill with HIV and AIDS.

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