My report from a recent symposium on HIV cure research called “Towards an HIV Cure” ahead of the International AIDS Conference in Washington DC is now online. It discusses recent progress, but also challenges towards achieving a cure from HIV infection.

Check out my recent interview with Laura Guay, vice president of research at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, that appears in VAX and focuses on recent findings from a breast milk study and the American Academy of Pediatrics' change in stance on infant circumcision.

Before HIV can enter a cell, the so-called Envelope spike on the viral surface needs to bind receptors on the target cell. This binding, researchers believe, causes the spike to open up and expose a normally hidden, inner portion of Envelope called gp41 that drives fusion of the viral membrane with that of the target cell, allowing the virus to enter. The structure of this opened “pre-fusion” state of the Env spike is unknown, but of great interest to researchers because it could inform the development of vaccine immunogens that induce antibodies that prevent the subsequent fusion of the membranes.

A research team led by Bing Chen, a structural biologist at Harvard Medical School, has created a lab-made version of the HIV Envelope trimer—from which the spikes on the outer surface of the virus are made—that is similar to the naturally occurring trimer. It is also more stable and more homogenous than previous lab-made versions, perhaps enough so that it could be used as an immunogen in a candidate vaccine for evaluation in human trials (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109, 12111, 2012). “I think we have made a truly stable and homogeneous Envelope trimer preparation,” Chen says, adding that this is the first time this has been achieved. 

A $31 million award from NIAID will start two new centers

The US National Institute for AIDS and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded an initial US$31 million to Duke University and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) to head up the Centers for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID). The centers are designed to build on the work of CHAVI, a virtual center created in 2005 to address some of the basic scientific problems impeding HIV vaccine design. CHAVI is now in the last months of its funding cycle.