WASHINGTON: A promising new AIDS vaccine may be able to completely eradicate the deadly HIV from the body, a new study has claimed.
The HIV/AIDS vaccine candidate developed at Oregon Health & Science University has demonstrated the capacity to effectively remove all traces of an AIDS-causing virus from non-human primates, researchers said.
The promising vaccine is being tested through the use of a non-human primate form of HIV, called simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, which causes AIDS in monkeys.
Following further development, it is hoped an HIV-form of the vaccine candidate can soon be tested in humans.
“To date, HIV infection has only been cured in a very small number of highly-publicised but unusual clinical cases in which HIV-infected individuals were treated with anti-viral medicines very early after the onset of infection or received a stem cell transplant to combat cancer,” said Louis Picker, associate director of the OHSU Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute.
“This latest research suggests that certain immune responses elicited by a new vaccine may also have the ability to completely remove HIV from the body,” said Picker.
The Picker lab’s approach involves the use of cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a common virus already carried by a large percentage of the population.
The Times of India
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