Fred Hutchinson researching ‘HIV Superinfection’ for vaccine
Mar 29, 2012, 1:06 PM | Updated: Mar 30, 2012, 7:07 am
The patients, 12 women from Kenya have been infected with two different strains of HIV according to Dr. Julie Overbaugh, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Researchers in Seattle are studying a unique group of
patients infected with different strains of HIV from
different sexual partners.
The patients, 12 women from Kenya, have been infected with
two different strains of HIV, according to Dr. Julie
Overbaugh at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The women also exhibit a robust antibody response.
“So these are people who have responses that are much more potent, so there’s a lot more of the antibody than a typical HIV infected individual and they’ve been defined as the top one percent of responses in HIV infected individuals,” said Overbaugh.
The patients have a condition known as “HIV Superinfection.”
Now Overbaugh is asking, what was it about their immune
response, what was it about these two viruses they have that
might have triggered the anti-body activity?
“Because this is what we want to do with vaccines, we want
elite responses, and we don’t know how to make them at this
point,” Overbaugh says.
Overbaugh thinks mixing different viral strains will create
a robust anti-body response to the HIV virus.
It’s estimated that more than 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV today and that someone in the U.S. becomes infected with the virus every 9 1/2 minutes.
The research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Findings are published online in PLoS Pathogens.
