Altering the Immune Hierarchy for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Vaccine Development by Targeting V1V2 Regions

The development of an effective human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine has been an ongoing area of research. Sequence diversity and immunodominance are major obstacles in the design of an effective vaccine against HIV. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have developed a vaccine that overcomes these major obstacles by utilizing the combination of DNA and protein targets directed to the conserved HIV regions.    Previous studies by NCI have demonstrated that co-administration of DNA expressing Gag and Env proteins elicits a protective immune response and reduces infection burden. Env, which mediates virus host cell entry, has 5 variable (V) and 5 conserved (C) regions. Data from the RV144 HIV vaccine trial indicated that targeting the first and second variable region (V1V2) of Env, correlated with reduced risk of infection, making this V1V2 region an important vaccine target.   The NCI technology describes a method of priming with the scaffolded DNA that expresses the trimeric form of V1V2 scaffolded onto 2J9C, followed by boosting with the DNA that expresses the intact Env plus the Env protein. Preliminary in vivo results in macaques demonstrate that priming with DNA expressing V1V2, favored the development of V1V2-specific HIV antibodies upon initial vaccination and provided a head start for development of antibodies targeting V1V2. A booster vaccine, containing both DNA and Protein components, increased the magnitude of responses to V1V2 and induced t...
Source: NIH OTT Licensing Opportunities - Category: Research Authors: Source Type: research