The search for a vaccine against HIV has been a long and difficult road for both researchers and people living with the virus. As of yet, there is no vaccine that can prevent a person from contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Researchers have taken several different approaches to developing an effective HIV vaccine, with varying degrees of success. One of the factors that make it difficult to develop an effective vaccine is that HIV behaves differently from other viruses. It is able to adapt quickly to medications, which is why most patients take up to four different medications to fight the virus.
The vaccines that are used today to fight other viruses copy the natural immunity that is obtained after an infection. Individuals who are infected by a virus, such as the influenza virus, develop a natural immunity to the virus that protects them from reinfection. Since virtually no people have recovered from AIDS, this particular means of developing an HIV vaccine is extremely difficult. Most of the vaccines on the market use live organisms that have been attenuated or that have been totally eliminated. This particular approach does not work with HIV, as there are serious safety concerns with the use of a live retrovirus and the killed virus has no antigenicity.
However, the search for an HIV vaccine has made very real progress in recent years. For example, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed what is known as a mosaic vaccine that they believe is capable of helping the human body’s immune system respond to HIV despite its ability to mutate. Tests have found that the mosaic vaccine is capable of greatly increasing immune responses in laboratory animals such as monkeys and mice. Spurred by donations from different foundations, the researchers hope to begin human trials of this type of vaccine sometime in late 2012.
The Maryland School of Medicine has also developed a vaccine that has been shown to produce strong antibody responses in different strains of HIV. These researchers are currently in the process of evaluating the safety of this vaccine for humans and its ability to elicit an immune system response in humans. With adequate funding, the search for an HIV vaccine may finally be successful in the near future. Researchers and scientists have spent the last 20 years trying to understand and combat the virus, and many of the leading experts in the field are hopeful that we can finally eradicate HIV once and for all.