New HIV vaccine could expose latent virus and kill it

Tackling hidden HIV. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) controls HIV but cannot cure it, because the virus lurks dormant (“latent”) in immune cells. Researchers have been seeking a way to flush out and eliminate this latent reservoir. A team at UCLA and the University of Bristol has developed an experimental vaccine-like therapy called an HIV virus-like particle (HLP) that appears to do just that news.westernu.ca.

How it works. The HLP is a dead HIV particle engineered to carry a broad set of HIV proteins. Injected like a vaccine, it primes the immune system to recognize HIV. Critically, lab tests with blood from chronic HIV patients showed that HLP activates hidden virus and purges infected cells. In those experiments, HLP “was able to specifically target just the immune cells containing the latent HIV reservoir and purge these cells of their HIV,” the researchers reported news.westernu.ca. Essentially, it forces dormant virus to reveal itself so the immune system (or other therapies) can destroy the infection.

• Shock-and-kill approach: First “shock” the latent virus into activity, then let the immune “kill” it. This HLP strategy is a new version of that concept.
• Potent results: In these lab studies, the HLP treatment was 100 times more effective at clearing latent HIV than previous candidates news.westernu.ca. Lead scientist Anthony Ford and colleagues said they saw a “striking ability of HLP to drive out the last remnants of HIV-1” from infected cells news.westernu.ca.
• Vaccine delivery: It can be injected intramuscularly, like a flu shot, making it potentially scalable worldwide news.westernu.ca.

Looking ahead. This work is still in early stages (human clinical trials are needed). But the implications are big: researchers believe that if latent reservoirs can be consistently cleared, the infection could be functionally cured. One of the leaders, Dr. Arts, said “to live HIV-free is a goal for the 39 million infected” worldwide news.westernu.ca. Future steps include testing HLP in animal models and diverse patient samples.

Potential impact: If this vaccine strategy holds up in trials, it could greatly shorten or eliminate lifelong medication for HIV. Unlike some complex “gene therapy” cures, HLP is relatively simple (a biological particle) and might be affordable. Combining it with ART could “trigger the latent reservoir even in chronic cases” news.westernu.ca. While more research is needed, this represents a hopeful advance toward freeing people from HIV infection.