WSJ: Antibody kills 91% of HIV strains

From The Wall Street Journal:

In a significant step toward an AIDS vaccine, U.S. government scientists have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered.

Looking closely at the strongest antibody, they have detailed exactly what part of the virus it targets and how it attacks that site.

The antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. Researchers screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies. Now the trick will be for scientists to develop a vaccine or other methods to make anyone’s body produce them.

That effort “will require work,” said Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was a leader of the research. “We’re going to be at this for a while” before any benefit is seen in the clinic, he said.

The research was published Thursday in two papers in the online edition of the journal Science, 10 days before the opening of the large International AIDS Conference in Vienna, where prevention science is expected to take center stage.

More than 33 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2008, and about 2.7 million contracted the virus that year, according to United Nations estimates. Vaccines, which are believed to work by activating the body’s ability to produce antibodies, eliminated or curtailed smallpox, polio and other once-feared viral diseases, so they have been the holy grail of AIDS research…”

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