HIV/AIDS: Immunochemistry, Reductionism and Vaccine Design

Marc Van Regenmortel was a Professor of Virology at various Universities in South Africa (Stellenbosch and Cape Town) and France (Strasbourg), and was head of the Immunochemistry Laboratory at the CNRS Molecular Biology Institute in Strasbourg for 22 years. He served as President of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses and published a dozen books and 420 papers and reviews on the immunochemistry of peptides and viruses, viral taxonomy and biosensor technology. He was an advisor to the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is currently an associate editor of Journal of Molecular Recognition, Archives of Virology, Advances in Virus Research, Journal of Immunological Methods, Analytical Biochemistry and Frontiers in Immunology.

He is an Adjunct Professor of the Medical University of Vienna.

This book gathers a series of pivotal papers on the development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine published in the last two decades. Accompanied by extensive comments putting the material into an up-to-date context, all three parts of the book offer a broad overview of the numerous unsuccessful attempts made in recent years to develop a preventive HIV vaccine. Providing a detailed review and analysis of studies published from 1998 to the present day, it examines the likely reasons for the failure to develop an HIV vaccine despite multi-million dollar investments.

Part I.Immunochemistry.- 1 What is a B cell epitope.- 2 Molecular design versus empirical discovery in peptide-based vaccines. Coming to terms with fuzzy recognition sites and ill-defined structure-function relationships in immunology.- 3 Synthetic Peptide Vaccines and the Search for Neutralization B Cell Epitopes.- 4 Specificity, polyspecificity, and heterospecificity of antibody-antigen recognition.- Part II. Reductionism.- 5 Reductionism and the search for structure-function relationships in antibody molecules.- 6 Reductionism and complexity in molecular biology.- 7 Editorial: Biological complexity emerges from the ashes of genetic reductionism.- 8 The rational design of biological complexity: A deceptive metaphor., 9 Basic research in HIV vaccinology is hampered by reductionist thinking.- 10 Commentary: Basic Research in HIV Vaccinology Is Hampered by Reductionist Thinking.- 11 Nature and Consequences of Biological Reductionism for the Immunological Study of Infectious Diseases., Part III. Vaccinology.- 12 Limitations to the structure-based design of HIV-1 vaccine immunogens.- 13 Two meanings of reverse vaccinology and the empirical nature of vaccine science.- 14 Requirements for empirical immunogenicity trials, rather than structure-based design, for developing an effective HIV vaccine.- 15 Paradigm Changes and the Future of HIV Vaccine Research: A Summary of a Workshop Held in Baltimore on 20 November 2013.- 16 Editorial: Paradigm changes are required in HIV vaccine research.- 17 An outdated notion of antibody specificity is one of the major detrimental assumptions of the structure-based reverse vaccinology paradigm, which prevented it from helping to develop an effective HIV-1 vaccine.- 18 More surprises in the development of an HIV vaccine.- 19 Why Does the Molecular Structure of Broadly Neutralizing Monoclonal Antibodies Isolated from Individuals Infected with HIV-1 not Inform the Rational Design of an HIV-1 Vaccine?.- 20 Old and New Concepts andStrategies in HIV Vaccinology: A Report from a Workshop held in Rome on 17 June 2016.- 21 Structure-Based Reverse Vaccinology Failed in the Case of HIV Because it Disregarded Accepted Immunological Theory.- 22 Immune systems rather than antigenic epitopes elicit and produce protective antibodies against HIV.- 23 Development of a Preventive HIV Vaccine Requires Solving Inverse Problems Which Is Unattainable by Rational Vaccine Design.- 24 Viral species, viral genomes and HIV vaccine design: is the rational design of biological complexity a utopia?