From rabies virus to anti-HIV vaccine
By Nathan Seppa
The essence of traditional vaccine technology is to make a disease-causing microbe detectable by the immune system. The easiest means is to present a disabled or killed version that awakens this immunity. Once that’s accomplished, a scientist can stand back and let the body take over.
However, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is so changeable that such an approach hasn’t worked. As an alternative, researchers are using a glycoprotein found on the surface of HIV—not the virus itself—as a red flag for the immune system.