HIV vaccine - Is there a ray of hope in the rugged journey?

The path of HIV vaccine development is riddled with numerous challenges. The high mutation and recombination rate of the virus, the establishment of a viral reservoir early in infection, and the failure to mount an effective immune response have added to the complexities of vaccine development.

In this review, we tried to revisit the vaccine development efforts, categorize the immunogens based on the immune response they tried to elicit and discuss the limited success or failure they achieved so far.

The initial efforts of vaccine development concentrated on a three-pronged approach, induction of neutralizing antibodies, induction of cell-mediated immunity, or a combination of the two. Since then, the efforts to develop an effective immunogen have come a long way through the usage of poxviral vectors, conserved immunogens, and mosaic immunogens to the current trend of using mRNA-based vaccines, engineered outer domains on scaffold proteins and the development of germline targeting immunogens for induction of broadly neutralizing antibody-producing B-cell lineage. We also tried to narrate the current trends and the future directions of HIV vaccine development.