Dr. Robert Gallo, director of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland Baltimore, co-discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) two decades ago and linked it to AIDS. Today, he leads a worldwide network of research on new drugs to fight HIV and the quest to develop an effective vaccine.
What do you make of the failure of the AIDS vaccine trial in September?
I was 99.9 percent sure that these vaccines that went forward and made the headlines would not work. It?s a virus that puts its genes in us. In order to have an effective vaccine, you have to have a complete blockade of the infection from the start. … Any vaccine that concentrates on killing infected cells after infection is not going to work.
What is the difference between a complete blockade and a traditional vaccine.
Traditional vaccines contain bits of a virus. An effective vaccine must be antibody-based. Antibodies are the proteins our body uses to identify and neutralize viruses. The hard part is any vaccine right from the start has to work for all the variants of HIV. Instead, money is being wasted on traditional reactive vaccines, the most recent trial of which seemed to possibly have weakened some participant?s chances against the virus.
How would an antibody-based vaccine be different?
We need to reach what we call sterilized vaccination. That?s something never accomplished before in the history of vaccinology. … Antibodies only work against some very particular virus types. We?re trying to produce antibodies for a wide array of virus strains.
