The Journal of Clinical Investigation has published a new study of a unique patient with an immune system that produces the types of neutralizing antibodies that are considered essential to an effective HIV vaccine response.
The patient has a rare combination of HIV and systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE, a disease where the immune system attacks the body's own cells and tissue.
Senior author Barton F. Haynes, professor of medicine and immunology at Duke Human Vaccine Institute in the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, says:
"Over the years we have searched for and now have found one person with SLE who was also chronically infected with HIV to determine if this person could make broad neutralizing antibodies."
"We found that the patient did indeed make these important antibodies, and by determining how this immune response occurred, we have enhanced our understanding of the process involved."
A broadly neutralizing antibody is one that is effective against many strains of a pathogen, and it protects cells from infection by blocking or neutralizing its biological effects.
Immune system needs to produce a broadly neutralizing antibody response
One of the things that has been holding back the creation of an effective HIV vaccine has been finding a way to get the immune system to produce a broadly neutralizing antibody response.
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