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Commentary

HIV-1 vaccine design: Harnessing diverse lymphocytes to conquer a diverse pathogen

Sherri L. Surman, Robert Sealy, Bart G. Jones and Julia L. Hurwitz

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In the Fall of 2007, the HIV-1 research field received news that their front-runner vaccine was not protective. In response to this disappointment, scientists are now reviewing the intricacies of the immune response toward HIV-1 to develop new and better strategies for vaccine development. Decades ago, researchers recognized the impressive amino acid and carbohydrate diversity of HIV-1, and the associated obstacles to vaccine development. At first glance, the diversity and other unique features of HIV-1 may seem insurmountable, but attention to vaccine successes in other fields serves to renew optimism. The newly-licensed rotavirus and papillomavirus cocktail vaccines remind scientists that diverse pathogens can be conquered and that the chronic nature of a virus infection need not thwart successful vaccine design. Here we describe current efforts to gain insights from other vaccine fields and to adopt a cocktail vaccine approach for the prevention of HIV-1 infections in humans.

Authors

Sherri L. Surman

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Memphis, Tennessee USA

Robert Sealy

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Memphis, Tennessee USA

Bart G. Jones

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Memphis, Tennessee USA

Julia L. Hurwitz Corresponding author: julia.hurwitz@stjude.org

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Memphis, Tennessee USA

This is an open-access article

 Download PDF

If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.