Word: virus
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Most vaccines work by exposing the immune system to a weakened or killed virus, which sensitizes the body to the bug and causes it to produce a standing army of antibodies. If a viable virus presents itself later, the antibodies signal immune-system cells, which engulf the invader. AIDS vaccines have never produced a crop of antibodies robust enough to get this defense going...
...Merck vaccine used a different approach, called cell-mediated immunity. Scientists inserted three HIV genes into an ordinary cold virus and injected it into the body. Immune-system dendritic cells would, it was hoped, gobble up the virus and then display its gene markers--along with those of the HIV. This would teach the immune system's T cells to recognize and kill AIDS-infected cells...
...explanation might be that the scientists chose a cold virus as the delivery vehicle. Cold viruses do a good job of ferrying HIV genes for the same reason they do a good job of making us feel lousy: once inside the body, they infect cells very efficiently. But they are so common most people have some tolerance to them, and so the immune system waves them past without getting too excited by them--or by any HIV genes that might be riding piggyback...
...possible solution would be to stick with the cold virus but use different HIV genes and two injections spaced a few months apart. Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City, thinks the answer might be to abandon the cold virus and switch to another one, perhaps chicken pox. HIV won yet another round, but the game is long--and science is patient. How an aids vaccine could work [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] 1 A cold virus has been engineered to carry three synthetically produced...
...Despite that, Dubai officials reported three times that the two suspects were not infected with the HIV virus, according to French diplomats, even though that appears to be untrue. A document released by government officials to French diplomats in August showed that one man had tested positive while in prison four years ago. Alexandre will receive word only in January whether he was infected during the alleged attack. "There is a lot of malfunctioning, but from where I do not know," says a French diplomat in Dubai, explaining the bungling over the AIDS tests. In late October, the French foreign...