
Experimental HIV vaccine successfully elicits broadly neutralizing antibodies to the virus Vaccinated rabbits produce antibodies to at least two vulnerable sites on HIV.
November 18, 2019
LA JOLLA, CA An experimental HIV vaccine developed by scientists at Scripps Research and the nonprofit vaccine research organization IAVI has reached an important milestone by eliciting antibodies that can neutralize a wide variety of HIV strains.
The tests, in rabbits, showed that these broadly neutralizing antibodies, or bnAbs, targeted at least two critical sites on the virus. Researchers widely assume that a vaccine must elicit bnAbs to multiple sites on HIV if it is to provide robust protection against this ever-changing virus.
The promising results, which appear in Immunity, suggest that researchers are one step closer to developing an effective HIV vaccine a major goal of medical science ever since the virus was identified in 1983.
It's an initial proof of principle but an important one, and we're now working to optimize this vaccine design, says the study's senior author Richard Wyatt, PhD, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research.
According to UNAIDS, about 35 million people worldwide have died of the immunodeficiency syndrome, AIDS, which is caused by HIV infection. About 38 million others are now living with HIV infection. Antiviral drugs can keep HIV-infected people alive and reduce their ability to transmit the virus to others, but these drugs do not clear the infection and must be taken indefinitely. Researchers have long recognized that a preventive vaccine, available at a low cost to uninfected people, will be needed to eliminate HIV as a major public health threat.
HIV's rapid mutation rate and other mechanisms for evading immune attack have made it an extremely difficult target for vaccine designers. But the test conducted by Wyatt and his team confirms that vaccination can elicit the kinds of antibodies that are needed to provide broad protection against HIV. These bnAbs, as vaccine experts call them, can neutralize multiple HIV strains because they bind to critical sites on the virus that do not vary much from strain to strain. People who are infected with HIV sometimes produce bnAbs as part of their antibody response, but infrequently and usually after infection has been long established. The chief challenge for HIV vaccine designers has been to find ways to stimulate the immune system in most or all individuals into making bnAbs that hit multiple vulnerable sites on the virus, in order to protect against a high proportion of HIV strains.
At the heart of the vaccine design by Wyatt and colleagues is a virus-mimicking protein based on HIV's Env protein. Normally, multiple copies of bush-like Env proteins are spread out on the surface of each spherical HIV particle. Each Env protein contains a molecular mechanism that allows it to bind to a receptor on immune cells known as CD4, and use that receptor as a portal to break into the cell. The researchers engineered a version of Env that models the essential structures on the real Env while being stable enough to use as a vaccine. To present it in a way that would resemble a real HIV virus particle, they created virus-sized synthetic spheres of fat-related molecules, liposomes, which are studded densely with the engineered Env proteins.
On a natural HIV Env protein, thickets of sugar-related molecules called glycans normally help shield the all-important CD4 binding site from immune attack. As an initial priming immunization, the researchers used versions of Env in which this glycan shield around the CD4 binding site had been partly removed.
The idea was to better expose this site and thereby stimulate a broad antibody reaction to it at the start, Wyatt says.
Subsequent booster immunizations over 48 weeks used Env proteins with restored glycans, to select for antibodies that target the CD4 binding site but can also get through this shield. The Env proteins in the booster shots also were mixes based on different strains of HIV, to generally promote antibody responses against Env structures that do not vary among these strains.
The team inoculated 12 rabbits following their vaccine strategy and compared the results with a control group that received only a single, glycan-shielded version of Env. They found that their vaccine strategy had a much better response, with five of the rabbits developing antibodies that could neutralize multiple HIV isolates.
The researchers analyzed the antibodies of the rabbit that had responded most strongly, and identified two distinct types of bnAb. One, which they called E70, blocks the CD4 binding site as expected, though in an unusual way partly by grabbing one of the shielding glycans. The other, 1C2, hits a different but well known vulnerable spot on Env, at the interface between two key segments of the complex protein. The binding of antibody 1C2 apparently destabilizes Env so that it can no longer mediate HIV's entry into host cells. That antibody also turned out to have an unusual breadth of neutralization, blocking 87 percent of a panel of 208 distinct HIV isolates.
The finding is an important demonstration that vaccination against HIV, if done in the right way, can achieve the goal of inducing bnAbs to multiple sites on the virus, Wyatt says.
The team of scientists are continuing to test and improve their vaccine strategy in small animal models and hope eventually to test it in monkeys and then humans.
The co-lead authors of the study, Vaccination with Glycan-Modified HIV NFL Envelope Trimer-Liposomes Elicits Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies to Multiple Sites of Vulnerability, were Viktoriya Dubrovskaya, PhD, and Gabriel Ozorowski, PhD, of Scripps Research and Karen Tran, PhD, of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibod
North America Stories
29/04/2026
It was a delicate job in a 150-year-old venue laden with traditions. Begun at th...
29/04/2026
In annual event, the league gives startup companies the opportunity to prove the...
29/04/2026
Panel discussions, networking, and a facility tour will take place in the renova...
29/04/2026
(L-R) Derek Drescher, Coss Marte, and Syretta Wright have each other's backs. (Micheal Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Veronika Lee Cla...
29/04/2026
Some people stumble into their passion. Julissa Padilla walked straight into a film vault. For her, entertainment was never just about the movies themselves. It...
29/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/04/2026
Clear-Com has appointed Brian Grahn as Market Outreach Manager of the Americas and Ben Turnwell as Business Development Manager for EMEA live, expanding their ...
29/04/2026
nxtedition is bringing its range of consolidated production tools to MPTS 2026, with new developments spanning transcription, editing, graphics and AI-assisted ...
29/04/2026
Quortex Switch to boost the streaming experience for Telxius customers, reaching millions of viewers worldwide
Synamedia and Telxius, the leading global connec...
29/04/2026
freispace, the leading ERP-as-a-Service platform for media and entertainment production, and Projective, a leading provider of post-production collaboration tec...
29/04/2026
DHD reports strong interest in its broadcast audio product range, exhibited at the April 19th-22nd NAB Show in Las Vegas. The event attracted a claimed 58,000 a...
29/04/2026
Student Spotlight: Alan Catz The Argentine film and game composer talks about working on League of Legends, receiving Berklee's BMI Award, and the lifelon...
29/04/2026
Jay Jennings Builds the Worlds You Hear on Screen The supervising sound designer behind A Minecraft Movie, The Meg, Letters from Iwo Jima, and dozens of other...
29/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/04/2026
Back to All News
SUPERNOVA: GENESIS Reached a Peak Audience of More Than 6.5 Mi...
29/04/2026
Jin-Quan Yu elected to the National Academy of Sciences Yu is recognized for his pioneering work in synthetic organic chemistry.
April 28, 2026
LA JOLLA, CA S...
28/04/2026
The audio team for the entertainment event must blend speech intelligibility with full-range music reproduction while considering the broadcast
Last week's...
28/04/2026
The Pac-12 Conference has released an updated primary mark and logo as the starting point of the new league's brand identity. The mark was soft-launched acr...
28/04/2026
The DP World Tour and Amazon Leo have signed an agreement making Amazon's lo...
28/04/2026
Pixellot and HELIOS have announced an integration that automatically converts full-game hockey video into individualized shift videos for each athlete, without ...
28/04/2026
Daktronics has partnered with the Asheville Tourists to manufacture and install a new LED video display. The installation was completed in late 2025 and is now ...
28/04/2026
Eutelsat has announced the renewal of its partnership with PCTV, a content aggregation and distribution company in Mexico and part of Megacable Holdings, for co...
28/04/2026
Daktronics has partnered with the Gary SouthShore RailCats to install a new LED video display at U.S. Steel Yard, replacing the previous Daktronics display inst...
28/04/2026
Telos Alliance and the College Radio Foundation have announced that WWSU-FM of W...
28/04/2026
Golf viewership is growing. The 2025 Ryder Cup drew five million viewers in the UK, a 45% increase over the 2023 event. The US Open was the most streamed golf e...
28/04/2026
The CW Network and WWE, part of TKO Group Holdings (NYSE: TKO), have announced t...
28/04/2026
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has announced that the Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) suite of standards and specifications has been named...
28/04/2026
The 2026 NAB Show is in the books and the show once again served up a cavalcade ...
28/04/2026
Gray Media and RAJ Sports have announced Rose City SportsNet (RCSN), a new netwo...
28/04/2026
Triton Digital's Podcast Metrics Demos+ Data Integration Enables Comprehensi...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
TAG Video Systems, the leading IP-native Realtime Media Platform, today announced that Lens, its visual service health interface for broadcast operations, recei...
28/04/2026
Open AV-over-IP Standard Recognized in IT Networking/Infrastructure and Security Category
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) today announced that the ...
28/04/2026
VFX History: Slit Scan
Graham Quince April 28, 2026
0 Comments
How did 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Next Generation...
28/04/2026
These DaVinci Resolve Effects Will Make You a More Creative Colorist
Kasia Jarco April 28, 2026
0 Comments
Creativity in color grading is not about ha...
28/04/2026
A Simple Introduction to Cavalry: Indexed Circle
Simon Ubsdell April 28, 2026
0 Comments
In this new introductory tutorial for Cavalry we're going...
28/04/2026
Rise, the award-winning advocacy group for gender diversity in the broadcast and media technology sector, is pleased to announce a new global training programme...
28/04/2026
Clear-Com has appointed Brian Grahn as Market Outreach Manager of the Americas and Ben Turnwell as Business Development Manager for EMEA live, expanding their ...
28/04/2026
LiveU is inviting MPTS visitors to step into the companys new Q Era on Stand D32, at The Grand Hall, Olympia, London (May 13-14). The company will showcase its ...
28/04/2026
IBC today announces the launch of the IBC2026 Innovation Awards, with nominations now open for projects, programmes and initiatives that exemplify breakthrough ...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...