A LIVE HIV vaccine that can’t infect the people it’s supposed to protect may
be possible after all. A team based in California has created a hybrid of HIV
and another virus that can enter cells, but can’t replicate once it’s there.
The vaccine, containing four HIV genes surrounded by the coat of the
vesicular stomatitis virus, should encourage the immune system to seek out and
destroy cells harbouring HIV. Animal tests are due to start any time now. “The
monkeys are all lined up and we’re ready to go,” says the team leader Flossie
Wong-Staal, director of the Center…
