Science
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl
13 August 2010  Vol 329, Issue 5993, Pages 713-876

Perspectives
AIDS/HIV: A Boost for HIV Vaccine Design
Dennis R. Burton1,2 and Robin A. Weiss3

A major roadblock to the development of an effective vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) is the lack of an immunogen that elicits broadly protective antibodies (1). Passive transfer studies in animal models have associated protection with neutralizing antibodies and, encouragingly, serum studies show that a subset of HIV-infected individuals produces potent broadly neutralizing antibodies (2). Understanding the viral targets of such antibodies and how they achieve potent and broad neutralization has become a key endeavor in HIV vaccine research. On page 856 of this issue, Wu et al. (3) describe the isolation of particularly potent monoclonal broadly neutralizing antibodies using a novel selection strategy, and on page 811, Zhou et al. (4) solve the crystal structure of the most effective of these antibodies in complex with its target gp120, a viral envelope glycoprotein. These studies further invigorate the currently active field of discovering broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV (2, 5–7) and provide valuable molecular information for rational vaccine design.