Pam3Cys: "These regions had never before been considered as targets for vaccines."

[Mort Zuckerman]

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Subject: Pam3Cys: "These regions had never before been considered as
targets for vaccines."

Date: Sep 4, 2009 4:47 AM

"These regions had never before been considered as targets for
vaccines."


We find that hard to believe since DeFoort put OspA/Pam3Cys
on a hypothetical HIV vaccine. See slides 15 and 16:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PresPam14_files/v3_document.htm

Why wouldn't Pam3Cys gp120 and gp41 have been a target
for a vaccine against AIDS? Anti-Pam3Cys antibodies would
have come from a patient who had some sort of TLR2 mutation
so I don't know if that makes Pam3Cys gp120, gp41 a vaccine
target.


"The antibodies themselves could potentially be used as a treatment
for infected patients who develop severe disease." <<< THAT would
be true, but I don't think this means "vaccine."


Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org

========================================

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-aids4-2009sep04,0,7870223.story
Antibodies found that prevent HIV from causing severe AIDS

Scientists were able to isolate two antibodies responsible for
resistance to the disease in an African patient. The discovery could
be key to the development of a vaccine.
By Thomas H. Maugh II

September 4, 2009

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After nearly two decades of futile searching for a vaccine against the
AIDS virus, researchers are reporting the tantalizing discovery of
antibodies that can prevent the virus from multiplying in the body and
producing severe disease.

They do not have a vaccine yet, but they may well have a road map
toward the production of one.

A team based at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla reports
today in the journal Science that they have isolated two so-called
broadly neutralizing antibodies that can block the action of many
strains of HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS.

Crucial to the discovery is the fact that the antibodies target a
portion of HIV that researchers had not considered in their search for
a vaccine. Moreover, the target is a relatively stable portion of the
virus that does not participate in the extensive mutations that have
made HIV able to escape from antiviral drugs and previous experimental
vaccines.

"This is opening up a whole new area of science," said Dr. Seth F.
Berkley, president and chief executive of the International AIDS
Vaccine Initiative, which funded and coordinated the research.

At least 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, and at
least 25 million have died from AIDS, according to the World Health
Organization. Two large trials of experimental vaccines have failed --
the most recent, in 2007, because the vaccine apparently made people
more susceptible to infection.

To find the neutralizing antibodies, researchers collected blood
samples from more than 1,800 people in Thailand, Australia and Africa
who had been infected with HIV for at least three years without the
infection proceeding to severe disease. Such individuals are most
likely to produce antibodies that interfere with the replication of
the virus.

Researchers at Monogram Biosciences in South San Francisco studied the
samples most resistant to infection, then a team from Theraclone
Sciences in Seattle isolated the antibodies responsible for the
resistance.

They ultimately isolated two antibodies, called PG9 and PG16, from one
African patient. The antibodies were able to block the activity of
about three-quarters of the 162 separate strains of HIV they tested it
against.

Immunologist Dennis Burton of Scripps and his colleagues then showed
that the antibodies bind to regions of two proteins on the surface of
the virus, called gp120 and gp41, that help the virus invade cells.
These regions had never before been considered as targets for
vaccines.

Researchers still have a long way to go to produce a vaccine, however.

The antibodies themselves could potentially be used as a treatment for
infected patients who develop severe disease.

But the long-term hope is to find molecules, either synthetic or
natural, that can stimulate the body to produce the broadly
neutralizing antibodies. Such molecules could potentially be the basis
for a successful vaccine.

thomas...@latimes.com

"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci