First clinical study of germline-targeting strategy: One step closer to a successful bnAb-based HIV vaccine
The challenging road leading to a successful HIV vaccine
The epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) remains a major threat to global public health, with approximately 38 million people living with HIV-1 worldwide. However, a prophylactic vaccine against HIV-1 is not available yet. In a recent study,1 Leggat and colleagues reported the first-in-human test of a germline-targeting HIV-1 vaccine candidate, eOD–GT8 60-mer adjuvanted with AS01B. Encouragingly, this strategy effectively activated the B cell precursors (germlines) of VRC01-class broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) in 97% (35 of 36) of vaccine recipients.
