Barcelona: Meta analysis of HIV diversity for vaccine design

Research lead

An international team of more than 40 investigators have combined their data on over 2,800 HIV-infected individuals across 5 continents to demonstrate that global HIV diversity is dependent on the genetic profiles that are dominant in the different regions of the world.

This finding will have very direct consequences for HIV vaccine design, as it shows that the genetic background of the local populations need to be taken into account.

The reasons for HIV’s diversity had been unclear to date. One of the researchers, Christian Brander, the scientific coordinator at the Institut de Recerca de la Sida IrsiCaixa, where HIVACAT, a Catalan consortium for the development of therapeutic and prophylactic HIV vaccines is based, said, “This new study makes it clear that vaccine design needs to go hand-in-hand with human genetic studies that will help to identify differences, but also common traits.”

The study included 9 different cohorts of HIV infected individuals distributed across 5 continents and looked for specific differences in the virus’ genes. These showed that global differences in the virus are largely due to the evolution of the virus in response to the locally most dominant genetic profile.