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Did you catch the vaccine issue of The Scientist? It features F1000 Members Robin Weiss and Gene Shearer (with Adriano Boasso), writing about the history and future of vaccination and an unusual but potentially effective alternative vaccination strategy.

Robin Weiss is probably best known for demonstrating that the cell-surface receptor CD4* is the route by which HIV enters T cells. He reminds us of the incredible health benefits vaccination has brought, and the danger of listening to the vocal minority of anti-vaccination campaigners. He’s also among the founders of The Foundation for Vaccine Research, a new, international effort “to advance and accelerate vaccine research and development against infectious diseases.” He has spent most of his career investigating retroviruses: leading an international research consortium in HIV vaccine discovery, funded to the tune of US$25 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his lab is currently looking at the reasons why, to date, anti-HIV vaccines have failed.

Gene Shearer has been with F1000 for nearly three years. He claims never to have had a formal immunology course in his life, yet has become one of the most-cited AIDS researchers today. He discovered that immune dysregulation plays a critical role in HIV pathogenesis, an hypothesis revised recently (with Adriano Boasso) to include the contribution from chronic activation of the immune system.

In our open access F1000 Reports journal, Gene and Adriano review an old finding in HIV vaccine research, that antibodies against human leukocyte antigens protected Rhesus macaques against simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection. They discuss revisiting this finding in the light of repeated failure to find an HIV vaccine, and weigh up the pros and cons of such an approach.

We’re very pleased to have such high-profile and innovative researchers evaluation articles at Faculty of 1000.

*The first author on this Science paper, Quentin Sattentau, recently became Section Head in Virology.