American scientists have developed a new approach to vaccine design that could be useful against HIV and other viruses which change their structure quickly, says a new study.

The study, which appeared March 28 in Science Express, the early online edition of the journal Science, offers a step toward solving what has been one of the central problems of modern vaccine design: how to stimulate the immune system to produce the right kind of antibody response to protect against a wide range of viral strains, reports Science Daily.

The new technique for vaccine design has been developed by a team of scientists from the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

Using the technique, the researchers engineered an immunogen (substance that induces immunity) that promises to reliably initiate an otherwise rare response effective against many types of Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

"We're hoping to test this immunogen soon in mice engineered to produce human antibodies, and eventually in humans," said team leader William R. Schief, an associate professor of immunology and member of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Centre at TSRI.