Design and pre-clinical evaluation of a universal HIV-1 vaccine.
BACKGROUND:One of the big roadblocks in development of HIV-1/AIDS vaccines is the enormous diversity of HIV-1, which could limit the value of any HIV-1 vaccine candidate currently under test.METHODOLOGY AND FINDINGS:To address the HIV-1 variation, we designed a novel T cell immunogen, designated HIV(CONSV), by assembling the 14 most conserved regio