Grant: Operating Grant: Innovative Biomedical and Clinical HIV/AIDS Research

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is still today a major cause of death and recognized as one of the most devastating viral disease. Even if major efforts have been deployed to develop a prophylactic vaccine to HIV, the results obtained so far are rather deceiving. Therefore, there is a major need to test and assay novel approaches that will qualify to hopefully offer more tools for the development of an efficient prophylactic vaccine to HIV. We propose to exploit a novel vaccine platform based on the use of rod shape nanoparticles that possess the capacity to elicit innate immunity through engagement of the toll like receptor 7 (TLR7), an important receptor known to elicit the anti-viral immune response leading to resistance against several viral diseases. Engagement of TLR7 also leads to the development of an efficient immune response to antigens that are attached to the nanoparticles. We have recently refined this technology to ease the attachment of long peptides containing several viral epitopes and that are derived from highly conserved region of the viral protein POL, GAG, NEG and MPER (from the surface glycoprotein of the virus). Alone those peptides are very weak immunogens, but their attachment to the nanoparticle will make them very immunogenic and give rise to a candidate vaccine that will be able to elicit a strong immune response and hopefully protection to the disease. To develop this candidate vaccine, we have chosen the macaque monkey as the main animal model and the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and the disease. The macaque model is very close to human and SIV is a virus that resembles HIV. Therefore, if our vaccine candidate is able to protect the vaccinated macaque against SIV, we will have a very strong proof of concept that help us to further refine our approach and design a vaccine proposition that could eventually be adapted to HIV.