Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The secret to combating AIDS and the HIV virus could lie in one of the last places you would ever think to look: the immune systems of llamas, researchers from the Scripps Research Institute and University College London reported Thursday in the journal PLOS Pathogens.
While the medical community has been making strides in the search for an effective vaccine against HIV, they have yet to successfully complete a serum capable of neutralizing antibodies against the pathogen. However, the new study indicates that using a combination of antibodies from the South American camel relative has proven effective at neutralizing the virus.
According to the UK Press Association, the experiments indicated that llamas inoculated using genetic material from HIV produced unusual antibodies that destroyed dozens of different strains of the virus. The antibodies produced by the creature are smaller than those produced by humans and other mammals, but they still proved capable of neutralizing every HIV strain tested.
Several types of known neutralizing antibodies target a specific part of the virus that binds to the CD4 receptor on the human target cells, the researchers explained. Biologists have indicated that this site is a narrow groove, and since antibodies in most mammals are relatively large proteins, their size could help explain why these neutralizing ones tend to be rare.
Llamas contribute to the fight against AIDS.
The scientists said that llamas produced both larger four-chain antibodies and four others that were comprised of only two chains in response to HIV. The smaller antibodies were able to bind to the viral particles, keeping them from invading white blood cells.
The two-chain antibodies are not usually present in the llamas’ bodies, but are instead specifically generated in response to the AIDS-causing virus. They were only present at low concentrations in the blood, and failed to fulfill the criteria for a protective HIV vaccine. However, when combined, they were able to eradicate 60 different strains of the pathogen.
Lead author Dr. Laura McCoy of the Scripps Research Institute and her colleagues said in a statement that the encouraging results demonstrate that “immunization can induce potent and broadly neutralizing antibodies in llamas with features similar to human antibodies, and provide a framework to analyze the effectiveness of immunization protocols.”
“This model has allowed us to examine four HIV broadly neutralizing clonal lineages induced by vaccination, which has not been possible in other animal models to date, and highlights the many challenges of evaluating immunization studies with deep sequencing of antibody variable regions,” they added.
Editor’s Note: All this llama talk had us thinking of only one thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2glOppqBRg
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