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New strategy for a potential AIDS vaccine:

In a recent experiment described in the journal PLoS Pathogens, Researchers in San Francisco have developed a new strategy for the AIDS vaccine by attacking a newly discovered distress signal displayed by cells infected with HIV.

Due to fact that the AIDS virus mutates quickly, efforts to design vaccines that identify and kill HIV itself has been difficult. Researchers mention that as soon as the vaccine-assisted immune system learns to attack the virus or cells infected with it, new forms of the microbe emerge that the body’s defenses do not recognize.

However, the distress signal, actually small proteins churned up to the surface of cells infected with HIV is unchanging. In theory, a vaccine might be developed to destroy cells that display this signal, killing at the same time the hidden HIV quietly duplicating itself inside them.

Dr. Douglas Nixon, a University of California, San Francisco immunologist, said: “For a vaccine against an infectious agent, this is a completely new strategy.”

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