HIV

            
             HIV discovery allows targeting of vaccines.
             Researchers continue to make new discoveries about HIV everyday. A recent article written by Helen Pearson highlights what seems to be a significant step towards finding a vaccine. Researchers have successfully profiled the HIV strains that are most likely to be transmitted during sex. A person who has been infected with HIV for many years has several different strains of HIV in their system. Some strains are more likely to infect than other and when one does get infected it is usually from only one type. The purpose of this profiling is so the scientists can design the vaccines to target these more infectious strains. What researchers know so far is that most of the more infectious strains contain a coating of protein called gp120. This protein is what allows the virus to attach to and enter human immune cells. However, this protein also makes the virus ten times for susceptible to antibodies that are able to fight the HIV virus. Natural human immune cells are unable to fight HIV and that is the purpose of the vaccines. I will expand on the significance of HIV research as well the nature of the virus and its theorized origins.
             Obviously HIV research is important because in order to defend against a disease, or anything for that matter, you must understand it. There are so many variables involved with HIV that research in one area may not apply in another. For instance HIV strains in homosexual males are different than the strains found in most heterosexuals. Another example of the difficulty of researching the virus is that in order for the scientists to see which strains are the more infectious ones they must study someone who has only been infected for a few months. Fortunately, many people volunteered themselves to the study and that's how the researchers were able to profile the different strains. Researchers already posses many prototype vaccines for HIV.