mabbo 7 years ago

Cow. Singular.

> One cow in particular showed an impressive immune response to most of the lab strains of HIV

The other 3 had a mild immune response.

This is first steps, not breakthrough.

Protostome 7 years ago

Hi, that's an interesting study.

Cows are known to have antibodies with unique conformations, probably since their metabolism involves bacterias much more than other mammals, such as ourselves. Antibodies are molecules that are generated by B-Cells and upon exposure to an invader, some antibodies go through rapid evolution.

The unique conformation of a cow antibody allows it to bind to deep pockets and places that human antibodies may have some difficulties reaching. With that said, while this research is interesting, the implications for human therapeutics are mostly negligible.

Cow's antibody cannot be transferred safely to humans since they will elicit an immune reaction and will probably be considered a foreign invader. Also, there's no shortage in human origin broadly neutralizing antibodies for HIV. Those are still not considered the best line of defence.

autokad 7 years ago

makes sense, i believe the current understanding is that HIV spread from bovines to felines, so they would have the longest history of fighting the virus

rimliu 7 years ago

Article feels somewhat weird when you remember that H in HIV stands for "Human".

theprotocol 7 years ago

The dissonance between that title versus the actual contents completely destroys what would otherwise be an interesting, albeit not especially remarkable read.

The article itself makes no attempt to live up to the title, and in fact downplays it throughout the whole thing, almost as if admitting "yes, I got you to click, now here's a fairly normal article."

edit: 2nd paragraph is my mistake, it's the HN title that I'm critical of, not the article title.

  • timthorn 7 years ago

    The article title seems quite measured: "Could cows be the clue that leads to an HIV vaccine?"

    • scotu 7 years ago

      The HN title is "Cows have shown an 'insane' and 'mind-blowing' ability to tackle HIV" as I post this comment, which is probably why @theprotocol had that impression

      • theprotocol 7 years ago

        Yep, it was my mistake. I believed when I wrote my response that it was the article title.

  • jasonkostempski 7 years ago

    HN title is not the article title.

    • theprotocol 7 years ago

      I stand corrected. I mistook it for being the title of the article.

whiddershins 7 years ago

Why was the article title changed on submission?

  • dang 7 years ago

    It's the first sentence of the article, which can often be used as an alternative title, though obviously in this case the baitiness is so strong that the title itself becomes the story. In such cases it's better to look for a representative phrase from the article text that's both accurate and neutral. I've changed the title above to one of those.

  • danso 7 years ago

    Maybe because the submitter thought the question-type headline was even more clickbaitish?