Anotações da conferencia de Zinkernagel, por ele mesmo

Vejam a descrição da conferência que havia sido enviada por Zinkernagel:

Why Do We Not Have a Vaccine Against HIV or TB?

While it is well accepted that cell-destroying virus infections must be dealt with efficiently by adaptive immune responses, this is less clear for infections with non-cytopathic persisting virus or persisting infections. It is shown here that the reason why cytopathic infections are efficiently eliminated via prompt neutralizing antibody responses, is that newborn humans cannot mount an adaptive immune response and therefore depend upon the transferred protective maternal antibodies. This however is clearly not an efficient mechanism to protect newborns against non-cytopathic infections, persisting in the infected virus-carrying mother. This interesting balanced situation between various types of acute versus chronic infections and host immune responses is excellently exploited by the successful development of vaccines against acute cytopathic childhood infections, but also explains why such vaccines against persisting non-cytopathic infections (such as HIV or TB) have been impossible to obtain. Alternative co-evolution-independent measures are therefore needed against such ‘persisting’ infections, including changes in exposure, vector control antibiotics or antivirals, and most importantly changes in our behaviour.