Building up to a new HIV vaccine

An anti-HIV vaccine may be closer thanks to a new approach to vaccine design that is being developed at the University of Maryland, US. 

Controlling the worldwide pandemic of AIDS is still a major goal of vaccine research. One of the difficulties is that few human antibodies have been found to react broadly with HIV. These antibodies target areas on the virus known as epitopes. The challenge is to make molecules that mimic these epitopes and then to incorporate them into vaccine design.

Recent studies have found that a new structure based on an oligosaccharide constitutes an epitope on the HIV virus. Medicinal chemists Hengguang Li and Lai-Xu Wang developed a mimic by using modified cholic acid as a rigid scaffold and then attaching oligomannose sugars to it. This scaffold approach has provided a whole new avenue to explore in the design of more effective epitope mimics. The hope is to develop an HIV vaccine based on a carbohydrate.

Eleanor Riches