Science                                                        
16 September 2011 vol 333, issue 6049, pages 1537-1668
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

Perspectives
AIDS/HIV
Converging on an HIV Vaccine
Bette Korber and S. Gnanakaran
Science 16 September 2011: 1589-1590.

Summary
Three decades after the discovery of AIDS we still do not have a vaccine against the causative agent, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Multidrug therapy can extend life and health for those with HIV, but only holds the virus at bay, making treatment a lifetime proposition. Access to treatment or other promising infection prevention measures such as topical microbicides (1) are an economic and social challenge (2). A vaccine would be a simple and direct strategy for prevention. On pages 1593 and 1633 of this issue, Wu et al. (3) and Scheid et al. (4) detail the trajectory of an immune response to natural HIV infection that may provide a path to a vaccine.