In the medical journal Chemistry & Biology s February 24th issue, there was a featured article regarding new discoveries in the ongoing challenge of HIV vaccination and prevention. According to the study, scientists have made a break-through discovery regarding the bacterium Rhizobium radiobacter, which is similiar to the HIV virus in that it is coated by sugar molecules on its surface. This resemblance is giving scientists a basis for developing a preventative vaccine. In HIV, the sugar molecules act as a cloaking device, allowing the virus to enter our system without being noticed until weeks later when it has already set up house and begun to multiply rapidly. Once our body recognizes the intruder, the virus is already several steps ahead of our body’s efforts to eliminate it. Scientists hypothesis that the sugar molecules found on the Rhizobium could be used to trigger our immune response into recognizing the sugar molecules in HIV, which would prompt a faster awareness to the virus’ invasion.
Before it’s possible to put this hypothesis into practice, scientists need to find a suitable protein to bind the sugar molecules. The protein is necessary to adequately trigger the development of antibodies to the sugar. These same antibodies would then recognize and work to eliminate the sugar molecules attached to the HIV virus. This is not totally new scientific territory, as a similar method of developing vaccines for meningitis and childhood pneumonia.
Source : http://ping.fm/t9U6g
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