HIV has long been considered as one of the most dreaded diseases in the world due to its rapid mutations and tendency to hide within human genetic material. Until good news regarding the disease has finally emerged. Researchers from the Duke Human Vaccine Institute have recently created an antibody that is allegedly capable of neutralizing the virus up to 99 percent which makes it the most powerful HIV-destroying antibody yet found. Experts say that the discovery of the neutralizing antibody would be able to provide and serve as a foundation for an HIV therapy in order to destroy a wide range of viruses in people who are inflicted with the disease.
The HIV-Destroying Antibody
In one of her statements reported by The Chronicle, LaTonya Williams, a post-doctoral associate for the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and first author of the study said that they were able to generate the antibodies that came from memory B cells and antibodies that came from plasma taken from both phases of the study itself. Williams have further explained that in course of their study, they were able to swap out the genes to make a hybrid, or chimeric, antibody that we found was more potent than any of the antibodies that were natural. It was found that the first phase of the study has been focused on isolating the HIV-fighting antibodies themselves, while the second phase has included a collaboration with George Georgiou-Laura Jennings Turner chair of engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, who allegedly developed a technique that allows the antibodies to be extracted from plasma.
Other Research Findings
Meanwhile, according to reports by The San Diego Tribune, one of the researchers involved in the study, Barton F. Haynes said that the other antibody, related to the first, was actually taken out of the blood plasma which is a known variant of an antibody called DH511. Furthermore, Haynes has added that they were able to show that the variants were derived from the same cell and that they had same kind of breadth, and neutralized a lot of different viruses, and were similarly potent. Ultimately, as per Haynes, the antibody is now being considered as a candidate to be used in treatment.
