Nucleic acid immunization of chimpanzees as a prophylactic/immunotherapeutic vaccination model for HIV-1: prelude to a clinical trial.

Vaccine development strategies have often utilized recombinant envelope glycoproteins which usually generate strong humoral immune responses but which do not generate strong cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). A recent novel experimental vaccination approach involves the technology known as nucleic acid immunization in which DNA plasmids expressing a gene of interest is injected intramuscularly in experimental animals. These expressed proteins then are presented to the immune system with the subsequent development of strong antibody and cellular (particularly CTL) immune responses. These types of immune responses have been elicited in rodents as well as nonhuman primates including chimpanzees. Results from studies on nucleic acid immunization of HIV-1 infected chimpanzees with envelope glycoprotein expressing constructs indicated that this method was able to decrease substantially HIV-1 viral load in these chimpanzees. These data are useful for the development and implementation of human phase I clinical trials with HIV constructs expressing various genes from the HIV-1 genome.