THSTI signed Agreement with IAVI for HIV Vaccine Design Programme

The Translational Health Sciences and Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute under the department of biotechnology (DBT), and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) in March 2011 signed an agreement to jointly establish, operate and fund an HIV vaccine design programme.

The programme will focus on one of the greatest scientific challenges of AIDS vaccine design and development. The emphasis will be on the search of antibodies capable of neutralizing a broad spectrum of circulating HIV strains. As per the agreement Gurgaon will become home to India’s first state-ofthe-art laboratory that will exclusively work to design an effective vaccine against the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Experts in the Gurgaon lab will now look at new antibodies and how they bind to the virus. The study will reveal to scientists which part of the virus to target with vaccines. The idea of the programme is to create artificially synthesized mimics of their targets on HIV, to be used in vaccines to elicit similar actions and teach the immune system how to thwart HIV infection.

Scientists have been working on powerful new antibodies which neutralise all major forms of the virus. An antibody is an infection-fighting protein produced by our immune system when it detects harmful substances like viruses and bacteria.