Antibodies with the ability to neutralize many strains of the deadly AIDS virus have been found via a new blood screening technique. This discovery might lead to the creation of a long-sought vaccine against the fatal disease.

This finding is the result of an effort by AIDS researchers worldwide. New methods developed by two companies, Monogram Biosciences, a unit of Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings, and closely held Theraclone Sciences of Seattle were useful to get these results.

25 long years have been spent in the quest for creating an AIDS vaccine. The energy for several scientists and funding agencies has been consumed since the discovery of the deadly AIDS virus. Its only now that the global alliance to identify the antibodies able to block many strains of the AIDS virus has achieved success.

Dennis Burton, a scientist at the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California, who is at the center of the new undertaking said, "The key thing about the antibodies we've found is that they're more potent than previous ones and that's great for a vaccine."

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a New York-based nonprofit group that is coordinating and funding vaccine-development efforts. The effort called Protocol G was launched in 2006 with an extensive collection of blood samples from 1,800 people who were HIV+ve for atleast three years without showing any symptoms.

Such people are most likely to make antibodies in their bloodstreams that can bar the HIV from entering the blood cells. At the end of the complex screening process with doctors working in clinics world-over, two antibodies were identified from one person from Africa.

HIV is very variable so the vaccine has to protect not just from one strain but most of them. The Protocol G effort will continue to hunt for more neutralizing antibodies till it can decipher the structure of this complex virus.