Search Continues for AIDS Vaccine Strategies

A group of medical scientists from three Seattle research facilities has received more than $13 million in federal funding to continue the search for vaccines against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The four-and-a-half-year grant is from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Building on their studies of the pathogenesis, transmission, and natural history of HIV, the scientists will explore a combination of approaches in designing potential vaccines and immunization strategies that would elicit broad protection against blood-borne and mucosal infection.

The research will have four major aims:

• Identify non-subtype B viruses from sub-Saharan Africa with biological and immunological properties suitable for vaccine development.
  
• Generate broadly neutralizing immune responses through quasi-species envelope vaccines.

• Examine whether modifying envelopes might be a workable approach to eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies.
  
• Analyze the immunization strategy of DNA priming followed by virus vector boosting or protein immunogen boosting, in various combinations, to augment both T and B cell mediated immunity.

Dr. Shiu-lok Hu, professor of pharmaceutics in the UW School of Pharmacy and professor of microbiology, is the principal investigator.

Other lead researchers are Dr. Julie Overbaugh, associate director of the Division of Human Biology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Dr. Nancy Haigwood, director of the Viral Vaccines Program at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute; Dr. Leonidas Stamatatos, associate member of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute; Dr. John Morrow of the Washington National Primate Research Center; and Dr. Murali-Krishna Kaja, assistant professor of immunology