RV144 paving the way for future treatments
A new scientific study conducted by a team of leading AIDS scientists reveal results that lead the way to the development of an effective human vaccine against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In the study published in Nature Medicine, researchers worked with a species of Old World monkeys, rhesus macaques to reproduce the trial results of RV144, the only HIV vaccine that has been tested and shown to reduce the rate of HIV acquisition in a phase III clinical trial.
Researchers were interested in not only recapitulating the findings from the RV144 trial, but also determining if replacing the alum adjuvant–a substance commonly found in non-living vaccines known to induce antibody-mediated immunity–with a different adjuvant, MF59 would decrease simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) acquisition at an increased rate and yield a more efficacious vaccine. Although MF59 is known to help stimulate the human body’s immune response, the idea that it could lead to greater vaccine efficacy is a popular working theory shared by scientists worldwide.
Full article at EurekAlert!
