DermaVir: a novel topical vaccine for HIV/AIDS

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccines have the potential to improve antiretroviral drug treatment by inducing cytotoxic killing of HIV-infected cells. Prophylactic vaccines utilize new antigens to initiate immunity; however, in HIV-infected individuals the load of viral antigen is not the limiting factor for the restoration of immune responses. Here we describe a novel immunization strategy with DermaVir that improves viral antigen presentation using dendritic cells (DC). DermaVir contains a distinctive plasmid DNA expressing all HIV proteins except integrase to induce immune responses with broad specificity. The DNA is formulated to a mannosilated particle to target antigen-presenting cells and to protect the DNA from intracellular degradation. After topical application, DermaVir-transduced cells migrate from the skin to the draining lymph node and interdigitate as DermaVir-expressing, antigen-presenting DC. We compared the immunogenicity of topical and ex vivo DC-based DermaVir vaccinations in naive rhesus macaques. Both vaccinations induced simian immunodeficiency virus-specific CD4 helper and CD8 memory T cells detected by an in vivo skin test and an in vitro intracellular cytokine-based assay. Topical DermaVir vaccination represents an improvement upon existing ex vivo DC-based immunization technologies and may provide a new therapeutic option for HIV-infected patients.