AIDS

Despite over 25 years of research, the AIDS pandemic continues to spread worldwide. The advent and distribution of antiviral drugs (Anti-Retroviral Treatment, or ART) has meant that many who have become infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can control their infections and live longer, healthier lives. Yet not everyone in the developing world has access to these drugs. According to the New York Times in September 2008, “by the latest and most sophisticated measurements, the disease continues to frustrate federal and local efforts to rein it in.” A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the number of people newly infected each year with HIV in the United States is 40 percent higher than previously estimated. Teens and adults of all ages are at risk of contracting this deadly infection.

A safe and effective vaccine remains the best hope of controlling the HIV pandemic. Progress toward the development of a vaccine for HIV has been hindered by the lack of well-defined animal models with which to study HIV infection in humans. The rhesus macaque develops a disease that closely mimics human acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) when infected by simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) or chimeric simian-human immunodeficiency viruses (SHIV), and represents the best animal model for HIV infection. Because of the similarity of the immune systems of macaques and humans, preclinical vaccine development is heavily dependent on the SIV and SHIV macaque models.

At ONPRC, we study the basic immune responses to HIV infection using these valuable animal models. Scientists at the Center are at the forefront of those discoveries, learning how both antibodies and killer T cells contribute to control and how these immune responses might be best generated by vaccination. Although a fully effective vaccine is still years away, we are making great strides toward defining the kinds of vaccines that can work to help control or prevent infection.