Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from Fred Hutch, author Sabrina Richards discusses how a twenty-five-year-old blood sample may be the key to perfecting the HIV vaccine.

• How might philanthropists help researchers understand the proteins in this blood sample? What technology and research do we have access to today that we may not have had twenty-five years ago when the sample was first taken?

• To learn about one solution to the HIV/AIDS crisis, click here.

Forward progress sometimes requires a backward glance. A twenty-five-year-old blood sample from an infant infected with HIV could hold clues to modeling a better HIV vaccine, according to work published in Nature Communications by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The sample, which held a special HIV-blocking protein that can develop after HIV infection, was taken during a groundbreaking HIV transmission trial conducted in the early 1990s. At the time antiretroviral drugs were not available and whether HIV could be transmitted through breast milk was unknown. HIV-positive mothers in Nairobi, Kenya, helped researchers discover that the virus could indeed spread to infants via breastfeeding. Carefully preserved for more than two decades, the blood samples collected during this study are providing new answers to then-undreamed-of questions made possible by advances in research tools.

The special HIV-blocking protein in the infant’s blood is known as a broadly neutralizing antibody. HIV vaccine developers hope that vaccines that trigger this protein prior to HIV exposure — a goal that has yet to be achieved in people — can protect people from HIV infection.

After tracing the antibody’s evolution using new computational methods, the Hutch scientists found that it had taken a shortcut compared to broadly neutralizing antibodies from people infected with HIV as adults.

Read the full article about research into an HIV vaccine by Sabrina Richards at Fred Hutch News Service