Therapeutic Vaccination of HIV-infected Patients

Dear Colleagues,

The disadvantages of the life-long ART after HIV infection, including the increasing incidence of non-AIDS defining conditions and premature ageing experienced in spite of ART, as well as the huge number of affected persons, have placed the cure of HIV as a primary goal of Public Health. 

While a complete eradication of HIV has been achieved in two patients using the transplantation of haemopoietic stem cells that were resistant to HIV-infection, and there are examples of functional cure either spontaneously (elite controllers) or after ART (post-treatment controllers), nevertheless no strategies have been successful in reducing the reservoir size, nor in achieving constant remissions. Vaccines have been shown to have an enormous impact on the global burden of diseases; however, although great international efforts have been made, nearly after 40 years from the discovery of HIV, one of the most important sexually transmitted infections worldwide, an effective vaccine is not available yet. Variability of HIV, its persistence in the organisms and the complexity of its interaction with the immune system are the main reasons for this defeat. Failures of human trials for a successful preventive vaccine has led to the idea of developing therapeutic vaccines with the purpose of curing already infected patients by boosting their immune responses against the virus with the hope to allow safe interruption of ART.

To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the current trends in HIV therapeutic vaccine development and assessment, in this Special Issue entitled “Therapeutic vaccination of HIV-infected patients: Are we close to a safe cessation of ART?” we are delighted to invite authors to share their knowledge and experience contributing with an original report, original observation, or review. Manuscripts should focus on the scientific and technical progresses made in the field as well as in understanding the molecular mechanisms and immune responses involved to overcome the obstacles and accelerate the successful achievement of HIV cure. We sincerely hope that you will be able to accept our invitation.

Dr. Jean-Daniel Lelièvre
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• HIV Cure
• Functionnal cure
• HIV vaccine
• bNAb
• HIV reservoir
• antiPD1
• Vedoluzimab
• HIV elite controllers
• HIV post treatment controllers