A lot of good science and observing the responses of individuals who are infected,
as well as the responses of individuals who have been in
vaccine trials that have not been overwhelmingly successful but
that have given us clues, tell us some very important things.
That even though the overwhelming majority of infected individuals
do not make an adequate immune response, the fact is if you carefully probe.
And we do this with new molecular techniques, cloning techniques
that give us a real insight into the individual B cells that make antibody.
We find that, in fact,
individuals are capable of making what we call broadly neutralizing antibodies.
They don't make them right away, only about 20% of the people make them, and
they usually take up to two years or longer to make them.
By the time you make them, even though they're broadly protective,
it's too late for the individual who made them.
So what we need to figure out is how do you harness the immune system to stimulate
the B cell repertoire that will make the broadly neutralizing antibodies.
And do it in a timely manner,
within the framework of you'd expect a regimen for a vaccine to be.
So that it doesn't take two or three or four years to do it, and instead of
doing it in 20% of the individuals, you do it in 95% of the individuals.
We're starting to get some clues by probing individual immune systems.
That we feel now that we can get a hand on how to turn
that part of the virus which we call an epitope into an immunogen, which will
induce a response that will ultimately result in broadly neutralizing antibodies.
That's what we feel the important role and the road to an HIV vaccine would be.