The team have been working on the vaccine for the past 15 years and have already tested it on monkeys.
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However, Gallo and his team believe they may have now found the right, exact timing when the HIV surface protein, referred to as gp120, is vulnerable to detection: the moment the virus binds with a human body’s T-cells.
The first phase of the study will involve 60 volunteers testing the safety and immune response of the vaccine, and will last a year.
Gallo, 78, says it has taken a long time to move this vaccine into the clinic because he and his group have done extensive testing in monkeys, faced the typical vaccine challenges of manufacturing a human-grade product, and have had to scramble for funding. Once bound to both receptors, HIV can enter the white blood cell and establish an infection.
As reported in the news release of Science, gp120 first attaches to the CD4 receptor on T-cells and modifies its conformation so that the hidden parts of the virus will get exposed.
Even people who are HIV-positive are able to naturally develop antibodies that can broadly neutralize diseases, but these antibodies are often so unusual that they need to mature extensively before they are broad enough to handle major viruses.
To address this, Gallo’s full-length single chain vaccine contains the HIV surface protein gp120, created to link to a few portions of the CD4 receptor. “Sure. We wanted more and more answers before going into people”. It is being held in collaboration with Profectus BioSciences, a biotech that recently spun off from IHV.
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A Ph.D. student named Jinal Bhiman, who attends the University of Witwatersrand, recently wrote an article about the designs of protective HIV vaccines and their importance in the fight against HIV. This vaccine is being led by Professor George Lewis, the director of the institute’s Division of Vaccine Research. According to the Baltimore Sun, only one study-in 2009 in Thailand-came close to being effective enough for widespread use, and that only protected one-third of patients.
