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An experimental vaccine helped control a form of the Aids virus in monkeys for more than a year, suggesting it may lead to a vaccine for people, US researchers said.
They said the vaccine works by priming the immune system to quickly attack the virus when it first enters the body, a point at which HIV is most vulnerable.
Dr Louis Picker of the Oregon National Primate Research Centre, whose study appeared online today in Nature, said he thinks it will be possible to have a vaccine ready to test in people within three years.
Tests of the vaccine with a primate version of the virus called simian immunodeficiency virus showed more than half were able to keep the virus from replicating so that it was undetectable with even the most sensitive tests.
The study
So far, the vast majority of the vaccinated monkeys have maintained control over the virus for more than a year, gradually losing any signs that they had ever been infected.
Macaques in the unvaccinated group have since developed the monkey form of Aids.
Dr Picker and colleagues used cytomegalovirus (CMV) as a transport system to take the experimental vaccine into the body.
They chose it because scientists think most people are already infected with CMV - a virus that remains in the body for life but causes little or no symptoms for most people.
"What's exciting about these findings is that for the first time a vaccine candidate has been able to fully control the virus in some animals," said Dr Wayne Koff, chief scientific officer at the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), which helped fund the research.
The findings
Dr Koff said the findings also suggested the possibility that the immune system may eventually eliminate the virus altogether.
"This research gives us potential clues as to how we might design an HIV vaccine for humans that would provide the same type of control," he said.
"The breakthrough here is in using a viral-delivered vaccine that persists - essentially using an engineered virus to thwart a pathogenic virus," said Robin Shattock, a professor of mucosal infection and immunity at Britain's Imperial College, who was not involved in the research.
"Before this ... scientists had pretty much given up on the idea of a vaccine that could control HIV replication (but) this puts it firmly back on the agenda."
Efforts so far to make an Aids vaccine have not been successful, but a 2009 study in Thailand involving 16,000 people showed for the first time that a vaccine could safely prevent HIV infection in a small number of volunteers.
Dr Picker said the next step is to make a weaker version of the CMV virus to make sure it does not cause any problems in people.
"The concern would be if we move a virus that is not modified that in some small number it might cause disease," he said.(Reuters Health/May 2011)
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