Vaccination with Attenuated Simian Immunodeficiency Virus by DNA Inoculation

Abstract
Delivering attenuated lentivirus vaccines as proviral DNA would be simple and inexpensive. Inoculation of macaques with wild-type simian immunodeficiency virus strain mac239 (SIV mac239 ) DNA or SIV mac239 DNA containing a single deletion in the 3′ nef -long terminal repeat overlap region ( nef /LTR) led to sustained SIV infections and AIDS. Injection of SIV mac239 DNA containing identical deletions in both the 5′ LTR and 3′ nef /LTR resulted in attenuated SIV infections and substantial protection against subsequent mucosal SIV mac251 challenge.