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Scientists continue to develop an HIV vaccine
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The previous year was fruitful for doctors working on creating medicines aimed at combating HIV. Specialists from Spain have been working on creating a vaccine against HIV for quite a long time, and already in the second half of 2012, a team of scientists began testing the invented product. According to the forecasts of the workers who worked on this product, the vaccine should prevent the reproduction of viral cells in the affected organism and slow the spread of the virus in the blood.
Catalan scientists conducted the first experiments at the clinic of the Medical University of Barcelona. The team of doctors developing the vaccine conducted a study on 22 HIV-infected patients. During the experiment, scientists extracted infected cells from infected patients, treated them with the new drug, and then returned them to the patients' blood. At the moment, the results are positive: the rate of reproduction of infected cells significantly decreases, the rate of spread of the virus decreases by 80-90 percent. Scientists compared the results 12 weeks after the start of testing and after 24 weeks: seven patients have a stable result, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) practically does not spread.
Scientists began working on the development of this vaccine more than 7 years ago. Analysts predict that in 3-4 years, work on the long-awaited vaccine will be fully completed, and after some time, it will be able to save the lives of many infected people.
Japanese scientists are keeping up with the Europeans: a team of specialists from Tokyo has been researching and creating drugs aimed at treating oncological diseases for several years. Now scientists claim that they have managed to invent special cells that can both help treat cancerous tumors and fight HIV. The Japanese have managed to transform lymphocytes (white blood cells) into stem T-cells. These cells can be called artificial lymphocytes, since the body will not be able to produce them on its own.
The principle of fighting cancer cells and HIV infection is that T-cells created by doctors have the ability to destroy and recognize foreign viral bodies in the body. Such a method was known before, but due to the fact that artificial cells are very short-lived and lack the ability to reproduce in the body, it was not successful, since T-cells died without having time to destroy the infection. Now doctors claim that they have increased the possible lifespan of artificial T-cells and HIV infection can be destroyed.
At the moment, scientists admit only the theoretical possibility of destroying malignant tumors and HIV infection using this method. Reproduction of stem cells and testing their functionality will take a considerable amount of time and money. In addition, it will be necessary to check the safety of such an experiment and determine possible side effects. In any case, technology has advanced far enough and in the near future, specialists will be able to give a worthy rebuff to HIV infection.
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