Medical expert of the article
New publications
Scientists identify potential target for future HIV vaccine
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
The human immunodeficiency virus has managed to elude vaccine makers for 30 years, in part because of its incredible ability to mutate, allowing it to easily bypass any pre-established obstacles.
But now, it seems, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Reagon Institute (both in the US) have managed to find a promising strategy for the design of a future vaccine that uses a mathematical approach that has been successfully tested to solve problems in quantum physics, as well as in the analysis of price fluctuations in the stock market.
Vaccines teach the immune system to immediately respond to specific molecular features of pathogens. But the ability of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to mutate makes it virtually impossible to select the right vaccine. In search of a new strategy, scientists decided to abandon targeting individual amino acids. Instead, they set out to identify independently evolving groups of amino acids in proteins, where within each group, amino acids evolve in tandem, that is, “look at each other” to maintain the viability of the virus. The researchers were especially persistent in searching for such groups, the evolutions within which would have the greatest chance of ending in HIV’s collapse – its further non-viability. Then, by conducting a multi-faceted attack on precisely such places in the virus, it would be possible to trap it “between two fires”: either it would be strangled by the immune system, or it would mutate and self-destruct.
Using random matrix theory, the team looked for evolutionary constraints in the so-called Gag protein segment of HIV, which forms the protein shell of the virus. They needed to find collectively evolving groups of amino acids with a high level of negative correlations (and a low number of positive ones, allowing the virus to survive), when multiple mutations destroy the virus. And such combinations were found in a region that the researchers themselves called Gag sector 3. It is involved in stabilizing the protein shell of the virus, so multiple mutations in this place are fraught with the collapse of the virus structure.
Interestingly, when researchers looked at cases of HIV-infected people who were naturally able to fight off the virus, they found that the immune systems of these patients attacked preferentially at Gag segment 3.
The authors are now trying to find other similar regions in the structure of the virus outside the Gag sector, and are also developing elements of the active components of a future vaccine that will teach the immune system to instantly react to the presence of Gag sector 3 proteins and immediately attack it in the right way.
Animal testing is next, but for now, all the details of the work will be presented at the 56th Annual Conference of the Biophysical Society, which will be held February 25–29 in San Diego, California, USA. A summary of the presentation is available at this link.
[