SA scientists replicate HIV-fighting antibody

South African scientists may have discovered a way to prevent people from contracting HIV by identifying and reproducing an HIV antibody.

Their ground breaking research has been published in the esteemed journal Nature.

Scientists from the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, Wits University and the University of Cape Town have been able to create an antibody that can fight and destroy the HI-virus if it is in a person's body before they get infected with HIV.

The antibody is one that only 20% of HIV-infected people's bodies make.

It fights all strains of the virus, which is why it is called "broadly neutralising".

A scientist from the research centre, Penny Moore, said: "The antibody is special because it has long arms that break through the sugar coating the HI-virus uses to protect itself from the body's immune system.

"In other words, the antibody breaks through the HI-virus's defence."

Professor Slim Karim, director of the centre, said South African researchers will now give the antibody to monkeys.

If the antibody works to prevent HIV infection in monkeys, it can be given to people at high risk of HIV, such as young women in KwaZulu-Natal, every three months for a few years.

But research in humans would only take place in about three years, said Karim.

Scientists were able to isolate the antibody after researchers, including a PhD student, Jinal Bhiman, discovered which cells in the blood produce this special antibody.

Bhiman said in order to find the cell that produced the correct antibodies, she had to isolate it out of 10 000 cells.

"It is very seldom a PhD student finds something that will be published in Nature," said Moore.

After the discovery of the cell that makes the special long-armed antibody, scientists watched how the cells produced the antibodies.

Scientists need to understand how the human body makes these antibodies so they can manufacture a vaccine.

This vaccine would then tell the body to make these antibodies.

While a vaccine to combat HIV could be 20 years away, the fact that scientists have reproduced this antibody means they can work towards giving it directly to humans, to give them short-term protection from the virus.