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HIV vaccine project receives funding

24 June 2009

Fasseli Coulibaly
Dr Fasseli Coulibaly

Take an unconventional global health research idea, apply for funding, and the chances of success are usually slim.

Enter the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is paying 81 scientists US$100,000 each to test bold concepts. Dr Fasseli Coulibaly from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is one happy recipient.

He has devoted his research career to cracking the 3-dimensional structures of viruses: from birnaviruses of fish and poultry to poxviruses that affect animals and humans, and baculovirus that infects insects.

"Viruses have everything I want -- you can study them at the molecular level and also have an impact on public health," Dr Coulibaly said.

Dr Coulibaly will capitalise on this passion to design low-cost vaccines against HIV and potentially other human illnesses, but rather than use conventional vaccine vectors or carriers he will use sugar cube-like crystals, called polyhedra, from an insect virus harmless to humans, to try and coax the immune system into action.

"We want to prove that these polyhedra are better than existing ways of presenting foreign molecules to the immune system by comparing polyhedra containing the HIV-1 Gag protein with soluble HIV-1 Gag alone," Dr Coulibaly said.

Dr Coulibaly will work with Associate Professor Johnson Mak from the Burnet Institute, who has supplied the HIV-1 Gag gene for the vaccine. The challenge for the Monash team is to produce a crystalline vaccine that contains enough HIV-1 Gag for further testing by immunologist Associate Professor Rosemary Ffrench (also from the Burnet Institute).

"It would be fantastic if we could make a promising HIV vaccine," Dr Coulibaly said. "It's challenging and it might not happen but it is one of our long-term goals."

If Dr Coulibaly's novel vaccine works, the health applications would be extraordinary and future funding for ongoing research would be assured. He has a year to find the answer.