Catholic teenager spends summer in lab researching HIV cure

Published: 2004-08-04

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (CNS) -- While some of his peers have spent their summer on more leisurely pursuits, Catholic high school student Norbert Vaughn has spent his summer as an intern in a lab researching a cure for HIV. Vaughn, who starts his junior year at Pope John Paul II High School this August, has been spending 40 hours a week in a laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville as an intern with researcher Dr. Paul Spearman. The teen has been working with Spearman and his staff on a project to develop a type of HIV vaccine called a "pseudovirion" vaccine, or a noninfectious virus-like particle. The goal is to generate a vaccine that looks like the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, to the human immune system, but is synthetic and entirely safe. With this approach, "proteins on the outside of the virus, the envelope proteins, are presented in a way that can generate neutralizing antibodies," explained Spearman. "Neutralizing antibodies are antibodies that can bind to the virus and lead to its clearance from the body."

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