HIV vaccine
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HIV vaccine On the Web |
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1] Marjan Khan M.B.B.S.[2]
Overview
HIV infection is a major global health issue, affecting 36.7 million people world-wide. The number of people living with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ART) reached 17 million in 2015. Although ART has dramatically reduced morbidity and mortality in individuals with HIV infection and can also prevent HIV transmission but it cannot eradicate HIV infection due to the persistence of a latent viral reservoir, hence the need for ART is lifelong and the cost is substantial. Although ART is highly efficacious in preventing transmission in the setting of mother to child transmission, in sexual transmission through the treatment of infected partners in relationships, through pre-exposure or or post-exposure prophylaxis, but all these scale-up difficulties and costs may make widespread implementation challenging.Thus an HIV vaccine is essential as it is a more sustainable solution.The development of a universal effective HIV vaccine is an exceptionally difficult biomedical challenge. Firstly, no case of natural eradication of HIV infection has been identified, thus mechanisms of protection have not been definitively established. Secondly, the extreme diversity of HIV is a major obstacle as strains belonging to different subtypes can differ by up to 35% in their envelope (Env) proteins.Thus, vaccine immunogens derived from a particular strain may not be effective against other strain. To generate an efficacious global vaccine, immunogens capable of generating protective responses covering most major strains are required.