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Scientists have identified a potential target for a future HIV vaccine
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The human immunodeficiency virus has been able to escape the creators of vaccines for 30 years, in particular due to its incredible ability to mutate, allowing it to easily bypass any pre-established obstacles.
But it seems that scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Reagan Institute (both of us) succeeded in finding 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 analyzing price fluctuations in the securities market .
Vaccines teach the immune system to respond immediately to the specific molecular characteristics of pathogens. But the ability of the immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to mutations makes it almost impossible to select the right vaccine. In search of a new strategy, scientists decided to abandon the targeting of individual amino acids. Instead, they set out to identify independently evolving groups of amino acids in proteins, when within each group the amino acids develop in tandem, that is, "look at each other" to maintain the viability of the virus. Particularly persistently, the researchers searched for such groups, the evolution within which would have the maximum chance of ending up for HIV collapse - its further impracticability. Then, when carrying out a multilateral attack, it would be precisely these places of the virus that could be trapped between the two fires: either it would be strangled by the immune system, or it would mutate and self-destruct.
Using the theory of random matrices, the research team looked for evolutionary constraints in the so-called Gag-protein HIV segment, which forms the protein envelope of the virus. It was necessary to find collectively evolving groups of amino acids with a high level of negative correlations (and a low number of positive ones that allow the virus to survive), when numerous mutations destroy the virus. And such combinations were found in the region, which the researchers themselves called Gag-sector 3. He is involved in stabilizing the protein envelope of the virus, so multiple mutations at this site are fraught with the structure of the virus by collapse.
Interestingly, when the researchers studied cases of HIV-infected people who by nature are able to repel virus attacks, they found that the immune systems of such patients carried out attacks primarily on the Gag-segment 3.
Now the authors are trying to find other similar regions in the structure of the virus outside the Gag sector, and also develop elements of active components of a future vaccine that will teach the immune system to react instantly to the presence of proteins of Gag Sector 3 and immediately attack it in the right way.
Animal tests are in the pipeline, and for now all details of the work will be presented at the 56th Annual Biophysical Society Conference, which will be held on February 25-29 in San Diego, California, USA. A summary of the presentation is available at this link.
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