The discovery of immune system particles that attack the AIDS virus may finally open a way to make a vaccine that could protect

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问题     The discovery of immune system particles that attack the AIDS virus may finally open a way to make a vaccine that could protect people against the deadly and incurable infection, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
    They used new technology to troll through the blood of 1,800 people infected with the AIDS virus and identified two immune system compounds called antibodies that could neutralize the virus.
    And they found a new part of the virus that the antibodies attack, offering a new way to design a vaccine, they reported in the journal Science.
    "So now we may have a better chance of designing a vaccine that will elicit such broadly neutralizing antibodies, which we think are key to successful vaccine development," said Dennis Burton of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who led the study.
    "The findings themselves are an exciting advance toward the goal of an effective AIDS vaccine because now we’ve got a new, potentially better target on HIV to focus our efforts for vaccine design," added Wayne Koff of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, or IAVI, which sponsored the study.
    Since the AIDS pandemic started in the early 1980s, more than 25 million people globally have died from the virus. The World Health Organization estimates that 33 million are currently infected.
    There is no cure, although a cocktail of drugs can help keep the virus under control. Efforts to make a vaccine have failed almost completely.
    MUTABLE VIRUS
    Part of this is because the virus mutates so much that any one person is infected with millions of different versions, each one appearing different to the immune system.
    In addition, the virus infects the very immune cells that are supposed to help protect the body. And if even one virus gets past the immune defense, it appears to set up a lifelong infection. No drug has been able to eradicate it.
    IAVI director Dr. Seth Berkley said the findings will not lead directly to a vaccine, but show that there are new and better ways to design one.
    He said 10 percent of the patients whose blood was screened had a strong antibody response to the virus. "We have people with even more potent serum out there. We will probably see more," he said in a telephone interview.
    It may also be possible to use such antibodies as therapy themselves—such as the gamma globulin used for hepatitis virus. But the eventual goal, Berkley said, is a vaccine that produces antibodies that could stop the virus from ever infecting a person in the first place.
    "We haven’t been able to do that because we haven’t been able to find the right kind of response," Berkley said.
    Most vaccines elicit an antibody response, priming the body to make antibodies that will recognize and attack an invader such as a bacteria or virus.
    The two antibodies, called PG9 and PG16, are the first new HIV antibodies to have been identified in more than 10 years. They target a region of the spike the virus uses to infect cells, the researchers wrote.
    A team at South San Francisco-based Monogram Biosciences Inc screened the blood for the ability to neutralize HIV. Theraclone Sciences used its technology to identify the antibodies involved.

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答案 美国研究人员周四表示,他们发现了能够攻击艾滋病病毒的免疫系统粒子,这为研制用来保护人们不再感染这种致命病毒的疫苗提供了一条新的途径。 他们利用新技术,从1 800名艾滋病病毒感染者的血液中提取两种免疫系统化合物(抗体)来抵抗病毒。 他们在《科学》杂志发文称,发现了抗体攻击的病毒新成分,从而为研发疫苗提供了新路径。 “因此,现在有更大可能研制引发这种‘广谱中和抗体’的疫苗,我们认为这是疫苗研发的关键。”加利福尼亚州拉荷亚市的斯克瑞普斯研究所的项目负责人丹尼斯.伯顿如是说。 “这些发现本身对研发有效艾滋病疫苗的目标来说是个令人振奋的进步,因为我们现在有了一个可能能够更好地应对艾滋病病毒的新目标,我们可以集中力量进行疫苗研制”,项目赞助机构——国际艾滋病疫苗行动组织的韦恩.科夫补充道。 自20世纪80年代初艾滋病流行以来,已造成全球超过2 500万人死亡。据世界卫生组织估计,目前有3 300万人感染。 目前仍无法治愈,虽然一系列组合药物可以帮助控制病毒,但疫苗研制工作几乎完全失败。 病毒变异 部分原因是很多病毒发生变异,以至于每个人感染数以百万计的不同类型的病毒,每个人的免疫系统的反应都不一样。 此外,病毒会感染所有保护机体的免疫细胞。而且,只要有一个病毒突破免疫防御,就会造成终身感染,无药可除。 该组织负责人塞斯.伯克利博士说,研究成果并不会直接产生疫苗,而是可以提示研发疫苗的新方法。 他说,十成受测患者的血液对病毒有强烈抗体反应。他在一次电话采访中说道:“有的患者拥有更强大的血清,将来这种患者可能会更多。” 也可能用此类抗体作为一种疗法——如肝炎病毒所用的伽马球蛋白。但伯克利说,最终目标是得到能够清除感染者体内的病毒并诱导抗体产生的疫苗。 “由于未发现正确的反应方式,我们尚不能做到这一点。”伯克利说道。 大多数疫苗引起的抗体反应,启动人体产生抗体,以识别和攻击侵略者(如细菌或病毒)。 这两种抗体分别被称为PG9和PGl6,是10多年来首次发现的新的艾滋病毒抗体。研究人员写道,它们针对的是病毒用来感染细胞的脉冲区域。 位于南旧金山的Monogram生物科技公司的研究团队筛选血液。寻找具备中和艾滋病病毒能力的样本,Theraclone科技利用自身技术识别其中的抗体。

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