Scripps Research Institute scientists said their findings might energize attempts to create a preventive/therapeutic vaccine against HIV. To date, more than a dozen candidate vaccines attempting to raise immunity against the spiky proteins on the viral envelope have all failed in clinical testing, researchers said.

The Scripps investigators created devices they call glycodendrons that are designed to do two things at once -- inhibit the transport of HIV from where it traditionally enters the body, preventing it from moving deeper inside where it can infect immune cells; and set up an immune antibody response to a unique carbohydrate structure on the surface of the virus.

"This paper is about a new direction in HIV vaccine design," said the study's lead investigator, Professor Chi-Huey Wong. "Results we have so far are very promising."

The study is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.