HIV antigens

Class

Therapeutic mRNA vaccine

HIV antigens are viral proteins used as immunogens in vaccines designed to train the immune system to recognize and destroy HIV-infected cells. Because HIV inserts its genetic material into the host genome and creates a lasting reservoir of dormant infected cells, controlling or curing the infection requires immune defenses that can find and eliminate this reservoir even while standard antiretroviral drugs keep the virus suppressed. Vaccine antigens are usually drawn from relatively stable HIV proteins, such as Gag and Pol, or from engineered mosaic sequences—like the HTI immunogen, which stitches together fragments of Gag, Pol, Vif, and Nef—because these regions mutate less readily than the highly variable envelope protein and contain fragments recognized by cytotoxic T cells. Different delivery platforms achieve this in different ways: mRNA and DNA vaccines direct host cells to produce the antigen internally, favoring strong T-cell responses, while viral vector vaccines deliver genetic instructions inside a disabled virus that carries its own immune-stimulating signals. These approaches are often combined in prime-boost schedules, where one platform initiates the response and another strengthens it. This mechanism underlies both prophylactic vaccine efforts to prevent HIV acquisition and therapeutic strategies intended to achieve durable viral remission without continuous medication.