Based on the success of the CHAVI, two new Centers for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) have been established at Duke University and at the Scripps Institute to continue to meet the goal of developing an HIV vaccine.

2015-2016 CHAVI-ID Accomplishments: 

Induction of Protective Antibodies

• Made great progress on mapping two new types of bnAbs-the CD4 mimic antibody type of CD4 binding site antibodies that utilizes the VH1-46 heavy chain, and a V3 glycan bnAb that binds at the apex of the HIV Env trimer
• ​Made strides in understanding the nature of glycans on native-like trimers such as membrane-bound trimer
• Developed new rhesus VH and VL loci maps that are critical to our field’s rhesus macaque antibodyome work
• Made a major breakthrough on construction of Simian-Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (SHIVs) by optimizing the Envs for binding to rhesus CD4  
• Made steady progress in engaging bnAb germline lineages and in inducing both autologous and heterologous neutralizing antibody lineages
• Began testing immunization with sequential Envs as a strategy for recreating with vaccination the events that occur in infection
• Gained the ability of a wide range of Env immunogens in vivo to engage the germlines of multiple bnAb germline B cell receptors (BCR)
• Developed the concept of Vaccine Transient Immune Modulation (vTim) and our hypothesis of how to safely re-create this immunologic milieu in the setting of vaccination  

Induction of Protective T Cell Responses

• Developed centralized HIV genes for coverage for CD4 and CD8 T cell response breadth for multiple HIV isolates and have a clinical trial in place comparing consensus vs. mosaic Env immunogens as well as clinical trials planned for the next generation centralized immunogen for CD4 and CD8 breadth
• Developed new work on the CHAVI-ID conserved/mosaic and 5’-LTR vaccines in attenuated RhCMV vector and work on the mechanism of CD8 T cell killing via HLA E
• Found critical insights into the mechanisms of bnAb induction when they are made (cooperating B cell lineages), and the nature of the immunologic milieu that is present when bnAbs are made (release from tolerance controls)
• Determined a remarkable new area of research directly related to HIV vaccine development that has come from the 2011 CHAVI study in the Journal of Experimental Medicine that demonstrated that the initial antibody response to HIV was derived from pre-existing memory B cells that were gp41 reactive but also gut flora reactive