http://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USHHS-1dd9a5?reqfrom

New Media at U.S. Conference on AIDS

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/nioa-sdh112111.php

"Public release date: 23-Nov-2011

Scientists determine how antibody recognizes key sugars on HIV surface
NIH-led study advances HIV vaccine research

HIV is coated in sugars that usually hide the virus from the immune system. Newly published research reveals how one broadly neutralizing HIV antibody actually uses part of the sugary cloak to help bind to the virus. The antibody binding site, called the V1/V2 region, represents a suitable HIV vaccine target, according to the scientists who conducted the study. In addition, their research reveals the detailed structure of the V1/V2 region, the last part of the virus surface to be visualized at the atomic level.

The study was led by Peter D. Kwong, Ph.D., chief of the Structural Biology Section of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Some people who have been infected with HIV for several years begin to make antibodies that can neutralize a wide range of virus strains. These broadly neutralizing antibodies bind to one of four sites on the virus. One site involves a sugar at a spot called amino acid residue 160. (Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.) The sugar is located on the protein-based spikes that jut out of the surface of HIV.

The new study demonstrates how a broadly neutralizing HIV antibody called PG9 disarms the virus by grabbing hold of the sugar at residue 160, along with part of a second sugar and a short string of amino acid residues in the V1/V2 region of an HIV spike..."

Worth watching as this new subtype seems to be particularly vicious....

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/238223.php

"Article Date: 24 Nov 2011

Rare HIV, Group N, Reported Outside Cameroon

A man in France who recently travelled to Togo has been diagnosed with a rare type of HIV-infection - Group N. This is the first time this type of HIV-infection has been detected outside Cameroon. The infection is considerably more similar to the virus type discovered in chimpanzees than to other human type viruses.

Professor François Simon, INSERM U 941 of the Faculté de Médecine Paris-Diderot at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris and his team from the National Reference Centre for HIV in Rouen, France describe the circumstances in a Case Report in this week's issue of The Lancet..."

New Hope of a Cure for H.I.V. - Patients' success raises hope of a cure for HIV

November 29, 2011



"One man, the so-called Berlin patient, apparently has cleared his HIV infection, albeit by arduous bone marrow transplants.
More recently, a 50-year-old man in Trenton, N.J., underwent a far less difficult gene therapy procedure. Although he was not cured, his body was able to briefly control the virus after he stopped taking the usual antiviral drugs, something that is highly unusual(...) "I think we are much closer to a cure than we are to a vaccine," said Rafick-Pierre Sekaly, scientific director of the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida(...) Dr. Pablo Tebas, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who treated the man, said, "It is only one individual, but it is a remarkable result."

http://www.omaha.com/article/20111129/LIVEWELL01/711299932/0
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/2011112...ng03?template=printpicart
http://www.mail-archive.com/gay_bombay@yahoogroups.com/msg20261.html

http://www.sciencecodex.com/read/caltech_biol...v_infection_in_mice-82321

Caltech biologists deliver neutralizing antibodies that protect against HIV infection in mice

[...] Because mice are not sensitive to HIV, the researchers used specialized mice carrying human immune cells that are able to grow HIV. They utilized an adeno-associated virus (AAV) -- a small, harmless virus that has been useful in gene-therapy trials -- as a carrier to deliver genes that are able to specify antibody production. The AAV was injected into the leg muscle of mice, and the muscle cells then put broadly neutralizing antibodies into the animals' circulatory systems. After just a single AAV injection, the mice produced high concentrations of these antibodies for the rest of their lives, as shown by intermittent sampling of their blood. Remarkably, these antibodies protected the mice from infection when the researchers exposed them to HIV intravenously. [...] To test the efficacy of the antibody, the researchers started with a virus dose of one nanogram, which was enough to infect the majority of the mice who received it. When they saw that the mice given VIP could withstand that dose, they continued to bump it up until they were challenging them with 125 nanograms of virus. "We expected that at some dose, the antibodies would fail to protect the mice, but it never did -- even when we gave mice 100 times more HIV than would be needed to infect 7 out of 8 mice," says Balazs. "All of the exposures in this work were significantly larger than a human being would be likely to encounter." [...] VIP is a platform technique, meaning that as more potent neutralizing antibodies are isolated or developed for HIV or other infectious organisms, they can also be delivered using this method. [...] the team is currently in the process of developing a plan to test their method in human clinical trials. The initial tests will ask whether the AAV vector can program the muscle of humans to make levels of antibody that would be expected to be protective against HIV. "In typical vaccine studies, those inoculated usually mount an immune response -- you just don't know if it's going to work to fight the virus," explains Balazs. "In this case, because we already know that the antibodies work, my opinion is that if we can induce production of sufficient antibody in people, then the odds that VIP will be successful are actually pretty high."