Sanofi, US NIH engineer antibody that attacks 99% of HIV strains
Scientists at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and French multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi have collaborated and engineered a new antibody that is effective in attacking 99% of HIV strains.
It is built to attack three critical parts of the virus – making it harder for HIV to resist its effects.
Our bodies struggle to fight HIV because of the virus’ incredible ability to mutate and change its appearance.
There varieties of HIV – or strains – in a single patient are comparable to those of influenza during a worldwide flu season.
So the immune system finds itself in a fight against an insurmountable number of strains of HIV.
But after years of infection, a small number of patients develop powerful weapons called “broadly neutralizing antibodies” that attack something fundamental to HIV and can kill large swathes of HIV strains.
Researchers have been trying to use broadly neutralizing antibodies as a way to treat HIV, or prevent infection in the first place.
The study combines three such antibodies into an even more powerful “tri-specific antibody”.
The combination is more potent and has greater breadth than any single naturally occurring antibody that has been discovered, according to Dr. Gary Nabel, the chief scientific officer at Sanofi and one of the report authors.
The best naturally occurring antibodies will target 90% of HIV strains.
Dr. Nabel said they were getting 99% coverage, and getting coverage at very low concentrations of the antibody.
Experiments on 24 monkeys showed none of those given the tri-specific antibody developed an infection when they were later injected with the virus.
Dr. Nabel said: “It was quite an impressive degree of protection.”
The work included scientists at Harvard Medical School, The Scripps Research Institute, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Clinical trials to test the antibody in people will start next year.
