Topic: A new method of generating vaccines?

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

The original antibodies – from 10 Gambians with a rare, natural immunity – were refined and strengthened using a novel animal testing system which for the first time mimics in mice the way malaria infects humans.

The new mouse model developed in the experiment could prove a useful screening tool to test other experimental antibodies, the researchers say.

I am hearing more and more about this style of generating immunity.  Just find a few (or even 1) person immune to the disease and use their antibodies to create the vaccine.  Could this become a universal method of curing diseases?  Star Treks "broad spectrum vaccine"?

[Centurus]

It's not completely unheard of, but this is the first time I've heard of someone actually doing it.

I saw on a PBS special once about AIDS how when it first broke out, there were those people that were directly exposed to the virus, yet the virus never infected them, and they never got sick.  One researcher in the 80s speculated there was a mutation in those people that prevented the HIV virus from ever infecting their cells, and the virus just died as a result.

They had determined early on that the HIV virus invades cells much the same way that the black plague did when it ravaged Europe.  They wanted to know why, and speculated that a mutation called Delta 32 I believe, was responsible for why some people during the time of the black plague either got sick, but got better, or never got sick at all.  They did discover that the descendants of those people had this mutation, and judging from the percentage of how many people had it, and then going back 400 years, they determined that at the time the plague hit, the mutation was extremely strong in those survivors.

So they thought that maybe the mutation might also protect against HIV as well, and in those people they tested whose blood continuously resisted infection from HIV, they found that mutation. 

Not sure if anyone else ever saw that PBS program.

[Nemesis]

I have read that there are different forms of HIV and some of which your immune system can beat and once it beats one you become immune to all forms.  Unfortunately the most widespread form is one of the lethal ones.  There was an effort (whose results I haven't heard) to produce a vaccine based on the weaker strain.

[Centurus]

I have read that there are different forms of HIV and some of which your immune system can beat and once it beats one you become immune to all forms.  Unfortunately the most widespread form is one of the lethal ones.  There was an effort (whose results I haven't heard) to produce a vaccine based on the weaker strain.

There have been many attempts like that, if I remember correctly.  As far as I know they're still in the development phases.  But I'm not completely sure.