Discoveries
Finding may lead to new approach for preventing HIV transmission during birth
In Africa, where thousands of children infected with the AIDS virus are born each year, a drug or vaccine capable of preventing the virus from passing from mother to infant has the potential to save many lives.
Ruth Ruprecht, M.D., Ph.D.
In a recent study, researchers at Dana-Farber and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center suggest it may be possible to protect infants from acquiring the virus during birth by giving them and their mothers a combination of three potent human antibodies shortly before and after birth.
The new approach, known as passive immunization, was tested in monkeys that were later exposed to a virus containing parts of the human and monkey AIDS viruses. The antibodies were so effective at neutralizing the virus that throughout six months of observation, none of the monkeys in the study had detectable levels of virus in their blood.
"This demonstrates the principle that passive immunization with these antibodies can protect against HIV transmission during delivery and birth," says the study's senior author, Ruth Ruprecht, M.D., Ph.D., of Dana-Farber. "If this approach is found to work as successfully in humans, and if the antibodies can be produced inexpensively, it may offer a practical way of preventing mother-to-infant transmission of the AIDS virus, even in the developing world."
"This demonstrates the principle that passive immunization with these antibodies can protect against HIV transmission during delivery and birth."
— Ruth Ruprecht, M.D., Ph.D.
Other Dana-Farber researchers involved in the study were Timothy Baba, M.D., Ph.D., Vladimir Liska, Ph.D., Regina Hofmann-Lehmann, D.V.M., Josef Vlasak,Weidong Xu, Marshall Posner,M.D., Joel Wright, Ph.D., and Seyoum Ayehunie, Ph.D.
This study appeared in Nature Medicine, February 2000.
