Dear Colleagues,

In 2019, 38 million people worldwide were living with human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1), 1.7 million new infections were reported, and almost 1 million patients died of AIDS. Anti-retroviral treatment (ART) can dramatically extend the lives of HIV-1-infected individuals and, according to the UNAIDS 2019 fact sheet, 25.4 million HIV-1-infected individuals are currently receiving ART therapy. A fast track strategy to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 was postulated by the organization UNAIDS. To reach this visionary aim, rapid progress has to be made in the development of HIV prevention strategies and improved treatment options. If progress is too slow, as it looks like right now, the UNAIDS-commissioned modelling predicts a rebound pandemic by 2030, with an even more serious threat to future health. The increasing trend of resistance to widely used antiretroviral drugs in HIV-1-infected patients urges the development of safe and efficient vaccines, as well as anti-retroviral therapies, that are affordable and easy to administer. Despite the efforts of numerous research teams all around the world, no effective HIV-1 vaccine is available to date. The extremely high genetic variability of the virus and its ability to suppress protective immune responses hinder the development of a vaccine based on conventional methodologies. Another obstacle is the lack of adequate laboratory models to test potential vaccines on human tissue in a high-throughput manner.

In line with these considerations, we would like to encourage the submission of works on the recent advances in the development of novel therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of HIV to this Special Issue. Studies using vaccine immunotherapy, adoptive cell transfer, CAR-T cells, HIV-associated and HIV-specific antigen stimulation of immune/antigen-presenting cells, and the use of nucleic acid transfer are welcome. Adding new information about these subjects may improve the design and the efficiency of new therapeutic vaccination strategies of HIV.

Dr. Wilfried Posch
Guest Editor

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• therapeutic vaccines
• immunotherapy
• cell-based vaccination
• adoptive cells transfer
• CAR-T cells
• HIV-1
• AIDS