HIV mutates in order to survive the onslaught of a patient's immune system. However, some patients develop highly effective antibodies that can neutralise huge swathes of HIV mutants. An analysis of the arms race between body and virus, published in the journal Nature, has shown how these antibodies are made.
When someone is infected with HIV, their body produces antibodies to attack it. But the virus mutates and evades the offensive, so the body produces new antibodies that the virus then evades and the war goes on.
However, after about four years of this struggle some patients hit on to a winner by targeting something the virus finds harder to change - an Achilles heel.
"Even though the virus mutates and there are literally millions of quasi-species of virus because of all these mutations, but there are parts the virus can't change otherwise the virus cannot infect - these are the vulnerable sites," Prof Barton Haynes, of Duke University, in North Carolina, told the BBC.
At this stage of the infection it is far too late to make a difference for the patient as the virus is hiding in untouchable reservoirs.
However, some researchers believe that vaccines that encourage the body to produce these "broadly neutralising antibodies" may give people immunity to the virus.
Super antibody
The research team's study is based on a patient in Africa who had a rapid diagnosis, about four weeks after being infected with the virus.
They were eventually able to produce an antibody named CH103 that could neutralise 55% of HIV samples.
It was not produced in one easy step. Rather it was the product of the war of the immune system and HIV trying to out-evolve each other.
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