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An HIV vaccine is a potential vaccine that could be either a preventive vaccine or a therapeutic vaccine, which means it would either protect individuals from being infected with HIV or treat HIV-infected individuals. It is thought that an HIV vaccine could either induce an immune response against HIV or consist of preformed antibodies against HIV.
The T helper cells (Th cells), also known as CD4+ cells or CD4-positive cells, are a type of T cell that play an important role in the adaptive immune system. They aid the activity of other immune cells by releasing cytokines. They are considered essential in B cell antibody class switching, breaking cross-tolerance in dendritic cells, in the activation and growth of cytotoxic T cells, and in maximizing bactericidal activity of phagocytes such as macrophages and neutrophils. CD4+ cells are mature Th cells that express the surface protein CD4. Genetic variation in regulatory elements expressed by CD4+ cells determines susceptibility to a broad class of autoimmune diseases.
Natural killer cells, also known as NK cells, are a type of cytotoxic lymphocyte critical to the innate immune system. They are a kind of large granular lymphocytes (LGL), and belong to the rapidly expanding family of known innate lymphoid cells (ILC) and represent 5–20% of all circulating lymphocytes in humans. The role of NK cells is analogous to that of cytotoxic T cells in the vertebrate adaptive immune response. NK cells provide rapid responses to virus-infected cells, stressed cells, tumor cells, and other intracellular pathogens based on signals from several activating and inhibitory receptors. Most immune cells detect the antigen presented on major histocompatibility complex I (MHC-I) on infected cell surfaces, but NK cells can recognize and kill stressed cells in the absence of antibodies and MHC, allowing for a much faster immune reaction. They were named "natural killers" because of the notion that they do not require activation to kill cells that are missing "self" markers of MHC class I. This role is especially important because harmful cells that are missing MHC I markers cannot be detected and destroyed by other immune cells, such as T lymphocyte cells.
A lymphocyte is a type of white blood cell (leukocyte) in the immune system of most vertebrates. Lymphocytes include T cells, B cells, and innate lymphoid cells, of which natural killer cells are an important subtype. They are the main type of cell found in lymph, which prompted the name "lymphocyte". Lymphocytes make up between 18% and 42% of circulating white blood cells.
In immunology, seroconversion is the development of specific antibodies in the blood serum as a result of infection or immunization, including vaccination. During infection or immunization, antigens enter the blood, and the immune system begins to produce antibodies in response. Before seroconversion, the antigen itself may or may not be detectable, but the antibody is absent. During seroconversion, the antibody is present but not yet detectable. After seroconversion, the antibody is detectable by standard techniques and remains detectable unless the individual seroreverts, in a phenomenon called seroreversion, or loss of antibody detectability, which can occur due to weakening of the immune system or decreasing antibody concentrations over time. Seroconversion refers the production of specific antibodies against specific antigens, meaning that a single infection could cause multiple waves of seroconversion against different antigens. Similarly, a single antigen could cause multiple waves of seroconversion with different classes of antibodies. For example, most antigens prompt seroconversion for the IgM class of antibodies first, and subsequently the IgG class.
Original antigenic sin, also known as antigenic imprinting, the Hoskins effect, immunological imprinting, or primary addiction is the propensity of the immune system to preferentially use immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version of that foreign pathogen is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections. Antibodies or T-cells induced during infections with the first variant of the pathogen are subject to repertoire freeze, a form of original antigenic sin.
Lymphocytopenia is the condition of having an abnormally low level of lymphocytes in the blood. Lymphocytes are a white blood cell with important functions in the immune system. It is also called lymphopenia. The opposite is lymphocytosis, which refers to an excessive level of lymphocytes.
Stress hormones are secreted by endocrine glands to modify one's internal environment during the times of stress. By performing various functions such as mobilizing energy sources, increasing heart rate, and downregulating metabolic processes which are not immediately necessary, stress hormones promote the survival of the organism. The secretions of some hormones are also downplayed during stress. Stress hormones include, but are not limited to:
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, followed by its replication. The suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination. ADE may cause enhanced respiratory disease, but is not limited to respiratory disease. It has been observed in HIV, RSV, and Dengue virus and is monitored for in vaccine development.
Bruce D. Walker is an American physician and scientist whose infectious disease research has produced many findings regarding HIV/AIDS. He became interested in studying HIV/AIDS after practicing on the front lines of the epidemic in the early 1980s, prior to the identification of HIV as the etiologic agent and prior to the availability of viable treatment options.
An adaptive natural killer (NK) cell or memory-like NK cell is a specialized natural killer cell that has the potential to form immunological memory. They can be distinguished from cytotoxic NK (cNK) cells by their receptor expression profile and epigenome. Adaptive NK cells are so named for properties which they share with the adaptive immune system. Though adaptive NK cells do not possess antigen specificity, they exhibit dynamic expansions of defined cell subsets, increased proliferation and long-term persistence for up to 3 months in vivo, high IFN-γ production, potent cytotoxic activity upon ex vivo restimulation, and protective memory responses.
Bette Korber is an American computational biologist focusing on the molecular biology and population genetics of the HIV virus that causes infection and eventually AIDS. She has contributed heavily to efforts to obtain an effective HIV vaccine. She created a database at Los Alamos National Laboratory that has enabled her to design novel mosaic HIV vaccines, one of which is currently in human testing in Africa. The database contains thousands of HIV genome sequences and related data.
Shane Patrick Crotty is a professor of immunology in the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
Dan Hung Barouch is an American physician, immunologist, and virologist. He is known for his work on the pathogenesis and immunology of viral infections and the development of vaccine strategies for global infectious diseases. He was named the founding director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and is a founding member and a steering committee member at the Ragon Institute.
Marylyn Martina Addo is a German infectiologist who is a Professor and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) Head of Infectious Disease at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Addo has developed and tested vaccinations that protect people from Ebola virus disease and the MERS coronavirus EMC/2012. She is currently developing a viral vector based COVID-19 vaccine.
Catherine Blish is a translational immunologist and professor at Stanford University. Her lab works on clinical immunology and focuses primarily on the role of the innate immune system in fighting infectious diseases like HIV, dengue fever, and influenza. Her immune cell biology work characterizes the biology and action of Natural Killer (NK) cells and macrophages.
Todd Mackenzie Allen was a Canadian-born immunologist and virologist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University. He was a specialist in HIV vaccine design and the sequence evolution and diversity of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV). Towards the end of his career, his work was focused on developing novel immunotherapeutic approaches towards a functional cure of HIV, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapy and gene editing approaches capable of protecting against HIV infection.
Alex K. Shalek, a biomedical engineer, is the Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in IMES and the Department of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an Extramural Member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Additionally, he is a Member of the Ragon Institute, an Institute Member of the Broad Institute, an Assistant in Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Instructor in Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School. The multi-disciplinary research of the Shalek Lab aims to create and implement broadly-applicable methods to study and engineer cellular responses in tissues, to drive biological discovery and improve prognostics, diagnostics, and therapeutics for autoimmune, infectious, and cancerous diseases. Shalek and his lab are best known for their work in single-cell genomics and for studying a number of devastating, but difficult to study, human diseases with partners around the world.
Margaret Ackerman is an American engineer who is a professor at Dartmouth College. Ackerman develops high throughput tools to evaluate the antibody response in disease states. She oversees biological and chemical engineering in the Thayer School of Engineering.
Facundo Damian Batista is a professor of biology at MIT, the chief editor of the EMBO Journal,. and an associate director, scientific director, and principal investigator at the Ragon Instituteof Mass General, MIT, and Harvard. An expert in B cells and antibodies, he studies their fundamental biology and their applications to immunology and vaccine development.
References
- 1 2 Scanlon, Jessie (2020-12-10). "Galit Alter: Connecting scientists to speed up the COVID-19 fight". bostonglobe.com . Retrieved 2021-02-23.
- ↑ "Virology Faculty Member - Galit Alter". hms.harvard.edu . Retrieved 2021-02-23.
- ↑ "Alter - Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard". ragoninstitute.org . Retrieved 2021-02-23.
- ↑ Alter, Galit; Malenfant, Jessica M; Altfeld, Marcus (2004). "CD107a as a functional marker for the identification of natural killer cell activity". J Immunol Methods. 294 (1–2): 15–22. doi:10.1016/j.jim.2004.08.008. PMID 15604012 . Retrieved 1 April 2021.
- ↑ Alter, Galit; Martin, Maureen P; et al. (26 Nov 2007). "Differential natural killer cell-mediated inhibition of HIV-1 replication based on distinct KIR/HLA subtypes". J Exp Med. 204 (12): 3027–36. doi: 10.1084/jem.20070695 . PMC 2118524 . PMID 18025129.
- ↑ Atyeo, Caroline; Fischinger, Stephanie; Zohar, Tomer...; Alter, Galit (15 September 2020). "Distinct Early Serological Signatures Track with SARS-CoV-2 Survival". Immunity. 53 (3): 524–532. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2020.07.020 . PMC 7392190 . PMID 32783920.
- ↑ "Personal LinkedIn page of Dr. Galit Alter".
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