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"<p>\n\tResearchers in the United States have found that a new vaccine can protect macaques against the monkey equivalent of HIV known as SIV, offering protection to 13 of 24 rhesus macaques treated in the experiment.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tThe vaccine was still effective 12 months later in 12 of the 13 monkeys.&nbsp; The researchers said the work, published in Nature, might &ldquo;significantly contribute&rdquo; to the development of an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine, the BBC reports.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tThe vaccine works by stimulating the production of a certain type of blood cell called &ldquo;effective memory T-cells,&rdquo; which may remain vigilant in the body long after an infection has abated.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tProfessor Louis J. Picker of the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute in Oregon, the lead author of the study, compared the cells to armed soldiers at the ready.<br />\n\t<br />\n\t&ldquo;There are soldier that are back at the base with their rifles in the shed, and then you have the guys out in the field,&rdquo; Picker said, according to the BBC.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tPicker said there was evidence that the vaccine, which used the genetically modified rhesus cytomegalovirus, all but eradicated traces of the macaque form of HIV, which he said was &ldquo;unprecedented.&rdquo;<br />\n\t<br />\n\tWhile researchers in the field, like Professor Sir Andrew&nbsp; McMichael of Oxford University, welcomed the study, they said safety issues would need to be addressed before similar approaches could be tested in humans.<br />\n\t<br />\n\t&quot;I&#39;m excited by the science because it really does demonstrate that it may be possible to eradicate the HIV virus by a strong immune response,&quot; McMichael said, according to the BBC. &ldquo;But at the same time I&#39;m scratching my head how to take this approach into humans. CMV is not totally benign, it does cause a number of diseases. If you&#39;re giving people something you&#39;re not going to be able to get rid of should it cause problems, then that&#39;s quite a difficult risk to manage.&quot;<br />\n\t<br />\n\tPicker said that the issues of safety would be addressed in forthcoming work. He pointed out that early forms of the smallpox vaccine also carried risks to humans.<br />\n\t<br />\n\t&quot;On one level, 99 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa are CMV-positive and half the people in the developed world are, so we know at lot about it and it&#39;s mostly non-pathogenic, except in vulnerable populations like pregnant women,&rdquo; Picker said, according to the BBC. &ldquo;We&#39;re fully aware to make it available to humans, then the next step is to make a virus which retains or has an enhanced ability to make effector memory cells, but no longer has the capacity to infect vulnerable parts of the population.&quot;</p>\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://vaccinenewsdaily.com/stories/510531965-new-vaccine-shows-promise-in-stopping-hiv>