Mark Schoofs from the Wall Street Journal discusses advances made in HIV research and how this could affect other areas.
Scientists using a powerful mathematical tool previously applied to the stock market have identified an Achilles heel in HIV that could be a prime target for AIDS vaccines or drugs.
The research adds weight to a provocative hypothesis—that an HIV vaccine should avoid a broadside attack and instead home in on a few targets. Indeed, there is a rare group of patients who naturally control HIV without medication, and these “elite controllers” most often assail the virus at precisely this vulnerable area.
“This is a wonderful piece of science, and it helps us understand why the elite controllers keep HIV under control,” said Nobel laureate David Baltimore. Bette Korber, an expert on HIV mutation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the study added “an elegant analytical strategy” to HIV vaccine research.
Illustration credit: Dr. Mark Yeager, University of Virginia and the Scripps Research Institute, adapted from an article in Nature.
