Nature: a new way to discover HIV virus avoiding the killing of immune system

April 14, 2019 / Biovalley / a research team led by Yale University has found another molecule that HIV survives in response to an attack on the immune system This discovery will affect the thinking of scientists to develop an effective vaccine against HIV / AIDS Photo source: nature HIV virus will form a special shape structure called trimer on its surface The virus will use these structures to adhere, infect cells and produce more HIV virus In order to avoid the attack of the immune system, these trimers can change shape over time, so they have three different conformations The vaccine that scientists are developing now aims to target one of these conformations, thus triggering the immune response of the body against the virus But the latest study, published in nature, suggests that HIV may be able to evade detection of the immune system by hiding in another trimer conformation, known as state 1 According to the researchers, patients fight HIV by producing a wide range of neutralizing antibodies, most of which recognize viruses in the state 1 conformation "If these antibodies can bind to a trimer in the state 1 conformation, then any immunogen in the vaccine can recognize that conformation." Walther mothes, a professor of microbial pathology and co-author of the study, said "But surprisingly, existing immunogens recognize only the state 2 conformation, and produce state 2 conformation specific antibodies." Mothe's lab plans to further explore the structure of the state 1 conformation, which will help develop immunogens that can recognize this conformation Reference: Maolin Lu et al Associating HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein structures with states on the virus observed by smFRET, nature (2019) Doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1101-y