HIV disproportionately affects women in developing countries, especially in Southern Africa. Women thus stand to benefit most from a successful HIV vaccine and must participate in trials to test appropriate, gender-specific products. Several HIV vaccine efforts are currently underway in Africa. Participation in HIV vaccine trials requires that participants not only understand the complex nature of trial procedures, but that they also have autonomous decisional capacity to enroll. Given that the risk factors inherent in women's greater vulnerability constitute an intricate mix of biological, economic and social variables, will women's very vulnerability to HIV be an obstacle to ethical participation in vaccine development? This paper addresses some of the challenges underlying the successful recruitment of women into vaccine research and makes research and policy recommendations for the ethical inclusion of women in HIV vaccine trials in Africa.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J013v45n01_03 | DOI Listing |
Sci Immunol
January 2025
Department of Integrative, Structural and Computational Biology, Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Vaccination strategies against HIV-1 aim to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) using prime-boost regimens with HIV envelope (Env) immunogens. Epitope mapping has shown that early antibody responses are directed to easily accessible nonneutralizing epitopes on Env instead of bnAb epitopes. Autologously neutralizing antibody responses appear upon boosting, once immunodominant epitopes are saturated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Pediatric Infect Dis Soc
January 2025
Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH Bethesda, MD, USA.
Background: Vertical HIV-1 transmission despite antiretroviral therapy may be mitigated by use of long-acting, broadly neutralizing, monoclonal antibodies (bNAb) such as VRC07523LS. The present study was designed to determine the safety and pharmacokinetics of VRC07523LS.
Methods: VRC07523LS, 80 mg/dose, was administered subcutaneously after birth to non-breastfed (Cohort 1; N=11, enrolled in USA) and breastfed (Cohort 2; N=11, enrolled in South Africa and Zimbabwe) infants exposed to HIV-1.
Cell Rep
January 2025
Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Division of Virology and Immunology, Karolinska Institutet, 171 65 Solna, Sweden. Electronic address:
Protective antibodies against HIV-1 require unusually high levels of somatic mutations introduced in germinal centers (GCs). To achieve this, a sequential vaccination approach was proposed. Using HIV-1 antibody knockin mice with fate-mapping genes, we examined if antigen affinity affects the outcome of B cell recall responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Virol
January 2025
SA MRC Antibody Immunity Research Unit, School of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Parktown, Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Antibody Mediated Prevention (AMP) trials showed that passively infused VRC01, a broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) targeting the CD4 binding site (CD4bs) on the HIV-1 envelope protein (Env), protected against neutralization-sensitive viruses. We identified six individuals from the VRC01 treatment arm with multi-lineage breakthrough HIV-1 infections from HVTN703, where one variant was sensitive to VRC01 (IC < 25 ug/mL) but another was resistant. By comparing Env sequences of resistant and sensitive clones from each participant, we identified sites predicted to affect VRC01 neutralization and assessed the effect of their reversion in the VRC01-resistant clone on neutralization sensitivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Womens Health
January 2025
School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden.
Background: Cervical cancer is the most prevalent cancer in Mozambique, with endocervical adenocarcinoma accounting for approximately 5.5% of cases. Knowledge regarding the most prevalent HPV genotypes in endocervical adenocarcinoma is limited, within this setting.
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