Steering a Course to an AIDS Vaccine

Abstract

For more than 20 years, AIDS has been progressing relentlessly and predictably while medical technology has been stymied in its effort to provide a fix. We do have effective drugs, but they treat the infection at great expense and with great difficulty. And we know what will do the job: a safe and effective vaccine. After all, vaccines stopped polio and hepatitis B. The difference is that those viruses are highly sensitive to antibody killing, so the vaccines needed only to induce antibodies. But HIV, the unquestionable cause of AIDS, has evolved to elude antibody killing, thwarting our attempts to induce a broadly protective antibody response, even in animals. A test of an antibody-based vaccine is being run by an optimistic company, but few experts give it much chance of success.

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