Cow Antibodies Bring Hope for eEfective AIDS Vaccine Soon

Potential HIV antibody detected in cows

The immune system provides human protection against all possible viruses. Researchers from the US found a solution to inject patients the antibodies. They are produced by cows. Cows could be the key to the development of an HIV vaccine. According to a new study, they are able to produce effective antibodies.

Special cows are given special treatment: "These are probably the most carefully watched and pampered cows around the world. Their entire diet are strictly controlled, their health is checked daily.

The animals, of whom Matthew Frieman speaks here, are drug factories on four legs, says the US Virology from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. To make them, scientists have changed the genotype of cattle. "These transgenic cows have an additional chromosome in their cell nuclei, and they contain genes from humans that encode human antibodies, and the interesting thing about this technology is that if you vaccinate such a cow against a particular pathogen, it does not produce any cow antibodies against it”.

Despite years of research, there is still no vaccine against HIV infection. This is because the virus is constantly changing, even in the body of an already infected human being. Science is therefore feverishly searching for a so-called broadly neutralizing HIV antibody. This would protect against a variety of HIV strains.

An international research team has for the first time injected HIV proteins into four calves to test the response of the ruminant's immune system to the intruder. To the astonishment of the scientists, the cows produced within a very short time broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies. Already after 42 days, the cow antibodies neutralized 20 percent of the tested HIV strains. After 381 days it was as much as 96 percent, as the researchers reported in the journal "Nature".

Side effects of cow digestion

Although a small percentage of people are able to produce broad-neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies, it takes three to five years. One reason for this is that antibodies that act against the HI virus differ strongly from normal human antibodies.

To effectively attach to a virus, it needs a chain of about 30 amino acids that protrudes from the antibody. This is twice as long as that of an ordinary human antibody. For a cow antibody, however, it is short. And so the researchers came to the idea of trying their luck in cows. The complex digestive system of ruminants, which are populated with pathogenic bacteria, may be due to the fact that cows are capable of producing such antibodies.

Hope for vaccine

 

The researchers now hope to use the obtained findings to bring the human body to produce antibodies with long amino acid sequences. This could be the basis for an effective vaccine, the researchers believe. It is also possible that the cow antibodies themselves could be used for a drug for HIV treatment should their effectiveness be confirmed in other organisms

Anthony Fauci, director of the American National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, supported the research, the BBC said: "Already at the beginning of the epidemic, we have recognized that the HI virus is very good at evading immunization. That is why exceptional immune systems that produce broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies are very interesting - whether they are human or cows. "