KU News Release

KU researcher says HIV vaccine will be developed through worldwide collaboration

Heather Desaire

LAWRENCE — Today, more than 22 million people are living with HIV/AIDS globally. Another 25 million people have died from the virus since 1981.

These are daunting and tragic figures. But teams of researchers around the world are working together to keep the numbers from growing.

Heather Desaire, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas and one the foremost scientists in pursuit of an AIDS vaccine, said much of the drive toward development of a drug to halt the spread of the disease currently takes place at academic and nonprofit institutions, where there is a collective spirit to the research.

“Most of the need for a vaccine is in the Third World, where paying for such a vaccine isn’t really that straightforward,” Desaire said. “The other side of it is, people have been working for a long time in developing a vaccine, and it hasn’t been forthcoming.”

Desaire heads a team of determined investigators — made of research associates, graduate students and undergraduates — who share results among a larger community of scientists.

“One thing that I really like about the HIV vaccine field is that it’s a very collaborative environment,” Desaire said. “I think the people who are interested in this work realize that it’s a really hard problem, and we’re only going to solve it if we work together. There are many different teams throughout the U.S. and worldwide that are working on a vaccine — and they typically come together a couple of times a year, where they have very productive meetings where data is shared and ideas are exchanged.”

Desaire’s group cooperates with research teams at Duke University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham and Harvard University. The KU team focuses on analyzing glycoproteins — proteins with a carbohydrate attached — that offer promise as an HIV vaccine.

“The reason why these are interesting for AIDS vaccine development is because the HIV virus is covered in a glycoprotein,” said Desaire. “This is the first molecule that cells see when the virus infects cells. The idea is if you can develop a way for the body to recognize this outer coat of the virus — which is this glycoprotein — that would be a good way to develop a vaccine.”

Using mass spectrometry, Desaire’s team distinguishes which carbohydrates are attached to a protein and where they join the compound. Desaire’s hope is to characterize the glycoprotein on the surface of the HIV virus. But because the glycoprotein is present in small quantities, isolating the molecule is a challenge.

“If we knew what the carbohydrates were on the surface of the virus, then we could screen different types of vaccine candidates and essentially pick vaccine candidates whose carbohydrate profile matches the profile on the virus very closely,” said the KU researcher. “We know the protein sequence on the virus, and we can make that protein sequence in vaccines. But the other half of the molecule is carbohydrate. Essentially the problem is that now we’re trying to make a vaccine by only optimizing half the structure of the molecule — and that’s just not going to be a very effective approach in my opinion.”

Though research by Desaire and her colleagues throughout the world eventually could save countless lives, the work ahead remains difficult. The HIV virus relentlessly is changing its appearance to the immune system, which complicates creation of an effective vaccine. The best possibility is that teamwork among equally relentless researchers will bring about a breakthrough.

“It’s a very communicative field and I hope that will help speed development,” said Desaire.

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