Hermancia Eugene Email: hee2@pitt.edu Lab: Ross Lab: Currently, the most effective treatment available for AIDS patients’ is drugs, which only stabilize the patient’s symptoms and viremia. Vaccine development has been seen as an alternative to drug therapeutics. One of the greatest challenges in developing a HIV vaccine to date is the inability of a vaccine to overcome the great mutagenic capability and large diversity of HIV-1. We have proposed that the use of a consensus sequence of HIV-1 Envelope protein (Env) in vaccine development could be used to elicit such a broad host immune response. To facilitate the presentation of the Env immunogenic epitopes to the host immune system, a DNA vaccine expressing the Env on a novel virus like particle (VLP) will be used. We have proposed that the use of a consensus sequence of HIV-1 Env in vaccine development could be used to elicit a broad host immune response. It has been shown that for an AIDS vaccine to be effective, it must stimulate both humoral and cellular immunity. The role of this project is to determine the extent of the specificity and maturity of the cellular and humoral response to the SHIV-1 VLP with a consensus Env or a mixture of individual HIV1 strains Env using a SHIV model.