Researchers from MIT and Scripps have unveiled a promising new HIV vaccine approach that generates a powerful immune response with just one dose. By combining two immune-boosting adjuvants alum and SMNP the vaccine lingers in lymph nodes for nearly a month, encouraging the body to produce a vast array of antibodies. This one-shot strategy could revolutionize how we fight not just HIV, but many infectious diseases. It mimics the natural infection process and opens the door to broadly neutralizing antibody responses, a holy grail in vaccine design. And best of all, it's built on components already known to medicine.
This doesn’t say anything about whether their new vaccine protects against HIV.
But they took a classic adjuvant, alum, and combined it with a novel adjuvant (this new adjuvant actually two adjuvants combined to a nanoparticle). The antigens (what the immune system recognizes) stayed in the lymph nodes for 4 weeks and there were 3x more unique antibodies produced by the mice.