They develop a vaccine to fight against HIV

It is a mosaic vaccine, which takes "pieces" of different strains of the virus and combines them to generate favorable immune responses [19659003]. one of the great challenges of modern medicine. One of the main difficulties is that the virus is very genetically diverse – more than even the flu – so it's hard to conceive of a single response that works against all the strains that exist in the world. However, scientists are currently working on one of the most promising candidates, an inoculation that could solve the problem of genetic diversity of HIV and reduce the risk of new infections.

"Ad26 / Env" is only the fifth prototype of the HIV vaccine has progressed to the stage of human efficacy trials in a 35-year-old epidemic, "said Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Research in Virology and Vaccines at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Professor of Medicine at Harvard and author. principal of the investigation. The results of the same appear detailed this Saturday in the magazine The Lancet.

For the development of this new vaccine the researchers relied on "mosaic vaccines", which take pieces of different strains of the virus and combine them to generate immune system responses capable of encompassing a wide variety of subtypes across the planet.

The experimental version of this inoculation against HIV-1 (the type that causes the majority of infections worldwide) has been successful in generating immune responses against viruses in healthy adults and has been well tolerated. "In addition, the vaccine provided 67% protection against viral infection in monkeys," adds Barouch.

At the same time, scientists warn that preliminary results should be interpreted with caution, especially given the challenges inherent in developing a vaccine against the virus since the ability to induce specific immune responses against HIV It does not necessarily imply that the vaccine will protect everyone from infection.