By

In a recent study, University of Wisconsin researchers have found that HIV vaccines are more feasible than previously thought.

The study, recently released in the medical journal Nature Medicine, said the HIV virus’ mutated states are not as aggressive as the unmutated state, giving hope to the world’s growing HIV-infected population.

The study’s head author, Dr. Thomas Friedrich, a scientist at UW’s Primate Research Center, explained how past dilemmas with researching vaccines arose because the HIV virus mutates in almost every case. Because the virus mutates, it can escape traditional vaccines and drugs used to suppress it.

“All around the world, there are different strains of HIV,” Friedrich said, adding that traditional scientists try to design vaccines to specific pieces of the virus. “It’s a hugely diverse virus.”

Although this recent discovery, which earned Friedrich his Ph.D., may be beneficial for researching vaccines, the cure is not around the corner, he said.

“What it means is, the picture isn’t as grim as we thought,” he said, noting his work will develop new ways to find vaccines and help produce appropriate drugs. “It’s going to be really hard to find what to do next. It means there might be different ways to target an immune response.”

Friedrich said during the experiments, scientists changed specific parts of a virus used to simulate HIV. Contrary to what the scientists thought, most of the modified viruses injected into primates reverted back to something similar to the generic HIV strain. This answered some important questions for the researchers.

“Is HIV adapting to humans?” Friedrich asked. “Because this would be bad for vaccine development.”

Friedrich said this means the virus, in theory, will not change beyond recognition. HIV is already known for its ability to go undetected for long times after infection.

A new plan of attack is to use specific factors of the HIV virus that could be inoculated for those that tend to show up in nearly every case. Though HIV mutation is common, this study showed that the mutated strains were not as aggressive as unmodified versions, Friedrich said.

“It’s kind of like survival of the fittest virus,” Friedrich said, adding that if the unmutated virus is the strongest one, it is much more identifiable for a possible vaccine.

This is hopeful news for college students, as the college demographic experiences rising rates of infection around the world.

“Over 40 million people are now infected with HIV worldwide, and a vaccine is urgently needed,” Dr. David Watkins said in a UW press release.

Friedrich studied under Watkins, a UW professor of pathology and senior scientist at the Primate Research Center.

“We hope that our findings can be used to help design vaccines that show killer cells [from the immune system] to fight the virus most effectively,” he said.