There have been numerous studies showing how dogs can benefit human health, by sniffing out cancer, for example. Now it is time for cats to shine, as researchers say they may hold the key to a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine. Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of California, San Francisco, have discovered that blood from patients infected with HIV shows an immune response against a feline AIDS virus protein. Janet Yamamoto, professor of retroviral immunology at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Florida and corresponding study author, told Medical News Today: “Since FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus) and HIV-1 are distant cousins and their sequences are similar, we used the T cells from HIV positive human subjects to see if they can react and induce anti-HIV activity to small regions of FIV protein, which lead to the current story.” The team’s findings are published in the Journal of Virology.

New vaccine-development strategy for HIV The researchers say they are working on a T cell-based HIV vaccine that is able to activate an immune response in T cells from individuals against the feline acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) virus. T peptides are small pieces of protein that are crucial in this process, as they trigger the body’s T cells to distinguish viral peptides on infected cells and attack them. However, Prof. Yamamoto says that not all HIV peptides are able to work as vaccine components. Some enhance HIV infection or have no effect, while others have anti-HIV activities that become lost if the virus changes or mutates to avoid immunity. Share on Pinterest Researchers believe cats may be the key to an HIV vaccine, after peptides in the feline immunodeficiency virus were found to trigger T cells to kill HIV. Previous studies have shown that when combining various whole HIV proteins to create vaccine components, the results have not been strong enough to create a commercial vaccine. But the researchers believe that the feline AIDS virus could be used to discover areas of the human AIDS virus, and this could lead to a new vaccine-development strategy for HIV. “We had difficulty in identifying ways to select regions on HIV-1 for HIV-1 vaccine. Our work shows how to select the viral regions for HIV-1 vaccine. The regions on FIV or their counterpart on HIV-1 that have anti-HIV T cell activities can be used as a component for human HIV-1 vaccine,” says Prof. Yamamoto.