If you are a regular IAVI Report reader, it will come as no surprise that antibodies, particularly those that are both potent and able to neutralize a broad swath of global HIV isolates, are all the rage. Such antibodies have been isolated in droves from HIV-infected people and are now fueling vaccine design efforts. They are also being…

 In 2007, I was in Cape Town to attend a symposium on the challenges of global vaccine development. At that meeting, and during my visits to nearby clinical research centers, the mood was somber. Just weeks before, two HIV vaccine efficacy trials, known as STEP and Phambili, had ground to a halt. These trials were testing…

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” So begins Charles Dickens’s famous historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859. Dickens was describing the years leading up to the French Revolution, yet it is an oddly apt description of the current state of the vaccine field.” This October,…

There is more optimism than ever that researchers are on the path to developing vaccines and antibodies that can help stem HIV’s persistent spread.

After decades of work, scientists are now advancing rationally designed vaccine candidates meant to induce a long sought-after broadly neutralizing antibody response.