HIV/AIDS is Africa’s biggest problem. A group of researchers at Aarhus University is close to ­developing an HIV vaccine that can save millions of lives.

San Francisco at the beginning of the 1980s. The doctors at one of the hospitals in the city are perplexed; a number of people have been hospitalised with a mysterious fungal infection the doctors have never seen before. A similar scenario plays out at a hospital in New York a short time later. The doctors agree that the patients at the two hospitals are suffering from the same condition: a mysterious illness that appears to knock out the immune system. A few years later, the syndrome receives the name AIDS and is identified as a virus. Today, Africa is being ravaged by AIDS like a biblical scourge. At Aarhus University, a group of researchers may have found the solution to Africa’s massive AIDS problem: they have discovered how they can use the HIV virus as a vaccine by modifying its surface structure.

Researchers restructure the HIV virus

Professor Lars Østergaard works at the Infectious Disease Department at Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby, where the sickly sweet smell of disease lingers in the corridors. He is a member the SKAU interdisciplinary research project (a combination of the names Skejby and Aarhus University), which has been working for a number of years to develop an HIV vaccine. They are now close to reaching their goal.
“To vaccinate against measles, you give people a little bit of the disease so their immune system can react to it and protect them for the rest of their lives. It’s the same with HIV – to be vaccinated against this disease, you actually need to get a tiny dosage of the virus. The only problem is that you can’t just give people a small dose of HIV, as it will penetrate the cells and destroy the entire immune system,” the professor says.
In close collaboration with colleagues, including Associate Professor Mogens Duch and Professor Finn Skou Pedersen from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, as well as researchers from the Bioinformatics Research Centre (BiRC), the researchers from Skejby discovered that they could alter the surface structure of the HIV virus and switch off its ability to destroy the immune system while leaving the virus otherwise intact. This allows the immune system to react safely to the changed virus, which is risk-free.
“We’ve tested the vaccine on animals with promising results. The next step is to develop the vaccine further and test it on humans, but that requires more money, which we are in the process of procuring,” Professor Østergaard says.
The researcher group already receives funding from international foundations, the EU and Østjysk Innovation.

The future

Professor Østergaard hopes that it will be possible to test the vaccine on a large group of Africans in a few years. Half of the test group will be given saline solution as a control. Even if the vaccine has the desired effect, this does not mean that all problems will have been solved. There will be an exten­ded implementation phase during which 75–80 per cent of all Africans will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active.
“That’s easy to say sitting at your desk, but in reality, it’ll be extremely difficult. Anyone who’s been to Africa knows that you can’t just call a taxi and go out and vaccinate. In some places there are neither roads nor electricity. Fortunately, world history has shown that the WHO can handle challen­ges like this. They’ve eliminated smallpox through vaccination, for example. So it’s definitely possible,” he says, although it still seems like a long way off.
“It’s extremely exciting to be part of a process from the first crazy idea to the potential solution. Researchers all over the world are trying to find an effective vaccine, and there’s no guarantee that we’ll be the ones to crack the code. However, I believe we have a definite advantage here at Aarhus ­University because of our unique interdisciplinary collaboration,” Professor Østergaard concludes.

WHAT IS HIV/AIDS?

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is contagious if it comes into contact with mucous membranes or blood. Once HIV enters the body, it penetrates the white blood cells and destroys them. White blood cells are an important part of the immune system, which means the immune system of a person infected with HIV becomes seriously compromised, and the person becomes very ill and can die from infections that would not normally be fatal. The period from the time of infection with HIV to the outbreak of the disease is normally eight to ten years. Once patients start getting infections from microorganisms that would not normally make them sick, they are said to have AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). WHO estimates that a 33.4 million people are infected with HIV worldwide.

HIV DRUGS

Since the discovery of the HIV virus, doctors have been trying to develop a drug to cure the disease – without success. Today, a drug has been developed that reduces the viral load, which so the patient feels healthy for quite a long of time. The drug has to be taken every day, often causes many side effects, and is primarily available to ­patients in the Western world.