title: Epitope-vaccine as a new strategy against HIV-1 mutation.
abstract: An effective vaccine is urgently needed to stop AIDS-epidemic. Up to now none of the candidate HIV-vaccines has been developed to prevent HIV-1 infection. A few neutralizing antibodies against HIV-1 enveloping proteins proved to be highly effective to neutralize different strains in vitro. Unfortunately, these antibodies are rare in infected humans, and have never yet been raised by a vaccine. The multiple sequential and antigenic variability of HIV-1 led to unprecedented difficulties in development of effective vaccines and anti-viral drugs. More and more experimental evidences indicated that HIV-1 mutants resulted in immune evasion may be a grave challenge for conventional strategy to prepare effective vaccines. We suggested that epitope-vaccine could be a new strategy to induce high levels of neutralizing antibodies with predefined epitope-specificity against HIV-1. Several candidate epitope-vaccines including mono-epitope-vaccine, multi-epitope-vaccine, epitope-vaccines in combination, were prepared and systematically studied in animal experiments. These studies provided experimental evidences that epitope-vaccine could be a new strategy to develop effective vaccines for prevention and immunotherapy against viral infection of HIV-l or other viruses.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Immunology, Research Centre for Medical Science and Department of Biology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Y H
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D016915:AIDS Vaccines / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*; D000818:Animals; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*; D015686:Gene Products, env / Q000276:immunology; D015488:HIV Antigens / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D009154:Mutation; D009500:Neutralization Tests
chemical_list: D016915:AIDS Vaccines; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte; D015686:Gene Products, env; D015488:HIV Antigens