Vaccines Science Review An other way to approach HIV

Vaccines Science Review
An other way to approach HIV treatment is to develop vaccines against the HIV virus. Scientists made a lot of progress but are still trying to come up with a strategy in the elaboration of an efficient vaccine. They are confronted to a very challenging problem. How to make an efficient vaccine using existent methodology when they have to face the HIV virus. Almost all effective antiviral vaccines are based on two approaches:

1. The "live attenuated" strategy uses the entire virus but in a weaken form. Such viruses are made by gene deletion. In a case of the HIV virus, this approach has been rejected because of the retroviral nature of the virus. During its proviral form, such deletion into the viral genetic material can induce cancer.
2. The "whole killed" approach consists in killing the virus by eating it, by chemical treatments or by irradiating it. The resulting virus has still its glycoproteins at the surface but not able to integrate the cells. This second approach has also been rejected because there is always a possibility than not every single viral particle was killed. So, scientists found this strategy too dangerous.
The problem is to find a vaccine that is effecient and completely inoffensive for the immune system. This usually simple approach becomes very complicated when we have to face an HIV vaccine.
3. Scientists are now working on an alternative strategy where they selectively choose peptides from the surface glycoproteins that are recognized as antigens by the immune system. They however will have to face an other problem: What region to choose? One particularity of the HIV virus is its extremely rapid ability to mutate. For example someone who has been infected by a given strain of HIV could later on produce an other type of HIV. The diversity is not only from person to person but also within a given individual. The efforts are concentrated in finding constant and similar region for all the HIV virus forms.