[Immunobiological aspects of AIDS]

The growing pandemia of AIDS, which resulted in about 40,000 AIDS patients and about 3 million infected persons by the end of 1986, demands for the urgent creation of methods for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the disease. The present paper analyzes the main aspects of AIDS immunobiology, i. e. the molecular genetics of the virus, production of the viral components, construction of kits for immunoenzyme detection of antibodies to the virus, development of confirmatory immunoenzyme assays. The authors discuss the prospects of creating the synthetic antigens of the AIDS virus or producing them on the basis of genetic engineering both for the diagnosis and prophylaxis of the infection.