An innovative approach to HIV vaccines is a ” excellent news “, says Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at the Tenon hospital in Paris.
In fact, a new strategy has just demonstrated its ability to induce an immune response “early, important and lasting” once morest the AIDS virus while being well tolerated, according to the French team behind this vaccine preparation. This is, at this stage, a preliminary trial, called “phase 1”. It was carried out on thirty-six healthy people by the team of Professors Jean-Daniel Lelièvre and Yves Lévy, from the Vaccine Research Institute at the Henri-Mondor hospital (Assistance publique des hospitals de Paris, AP-HP, Créteil ), with the support of the National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS), the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) and the EuroVacc Foundation, in Lausanne (Switzerland) .
His results were presented on February 21 at the International Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which was held in Seattle (USA). It remains, of course, to prove its effectiveness in terms of protection once morest infections during a large-scale trial, known as “phase 2b or phase 3”.
Since the HIV epidemic swept across the world in the early 1980s, the fight once morest this scourge has come up once morest a stubborn obstacle: the development of an effective vaccine. Among the pitfalls, there is the fact that HIV directly targets the immune system, even though the effectiveness of a vaccine relies on this system. “HIV integrates very quickly into the human cells it infects, causing immunosuppression from the first infection”, emphasizes Gilles Pialoux. Hence the importance of taking it fast. “To be effective, a vaccine will have to block the entry of the virus into the mucous membranes, its main route of entry into the body”believes the infectiologist.
The theoretical interest of this new vaccine candidate lies in the fact that it targets “key cells of the immune response, dendritic cells, which play an essential role in the education and activation of the immune system”says Jean-Daniel Lelièvre. “It’s a paradigm shift”greets Gilles Pialoux.
An HIV envelope protein
This vaccine candidate therefore uses “a vector that targets these cells”explains Yves Lévy: a monoclonal antibody « anti-CD40 », which specifically binds to a surface receptor (the CD40 protein) of dendritic cells. This antibody is fused with the active ingredient of the vaccine: an HIV envelope protein.
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