Indeed, whether a natural protective state against HIV can exist remains unknown. If researchers prove these multiply exposed but uninfected individuals have resisted HIV through active immune mechanisms, they would represent the natural protective state upon which a vaccine could be modeled. A single targeted intervention may be capable of preventing HIV infection. To determine the factors that influence the body's response to HIV exposure and infection, investigators are comparing long-term HIV survivors with people who quickly became infected or sick. Leading areas of research include genetics, individual variations in the immune response, and exposure to or infection by less deadly HIV variants.
Antibodies can have different properties.
So-called binding antibodies simply attach to part of HIV and may or may not have antiviral effects. Scientists have identified the outer envelope of HIV as important for stimulating neutralizing antibodies. Multiple copies of a protein called gp160 form the HIV envelope. Gp 160 and gp120, which is a component of gp 160, have been used as the basis of many recombinant subunit vaccines , so called because they are genetically engineered to only contain copies of the envelope component of the virus. The chief regulatory T cell, the helper T cell, also is HIV's main target.