Question

SO I came across this article.

Answer 1

I haven't entirely read it but the title alone caught my eyes, http://www.aidsmap.com/Novel-immune-suppressant-vaccine-completely-blocks-HIV-infection-in-monkeys-human-trials-planned/page/2902377

@Abhisar I thought maybe you could tell us what you think and put it into laymen's term :P

Answer 2

CD4 T-cells are the immune cells which help us fight disease, HIV spread in our body by infecting these CD4 T-cells. This happens when these CD4 T-cells recognize the HIV virus as foreign particles and react with them. That is the time when HIV overpowers them and establish themselves within these cells.

The new vaccine works in the opposite way to most vaccines - by suppressing, rather than triggering, an immune response. This is because HIV and SIV actually require immune cells known as CD4 T-cells in order to proliferate and establish an infection in the body.

So they have developed a vaccine that introduces the body to the virus without causing an immune response. This requires the vaccine to somehow trick the body into thinking HIV is harmless, causing an ‘immune tolerance’ to the virus.

The new vaccine works by stimulating the production of a previously unknown group of immune cells known as CD8 T-cells, which then stop the monkeys’ CD4 cells from recognising `SIV`. This prevents any immune response and stops SIV from hijacking the CD4 cells and spreading around the body.

`SIV` is the `HIV` of monkeys.

I tried to be be as layman as i can :P

SOURCE: ` http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fimmu.2014.00297/full `

Answer 3

@iambatman

Answer 4

Thanks a lot Abhisar, great explanation :P!

I really hope this works out!

Answer 5

I will read this later, but looks cool.

Answer 6

yeah i hope so too, but chances are very less. HIV and SIV are not very similar and previously many discoveries which were more promising failed to show similar results on human trials.

Answer 7

Given the rate of mutation of viruses, it would not surprise me if that vaccine would be, at best, a temporary fix. Biologically temporary, so maybe a few decades, maybe less/more.

Answer 8

Interestingggg