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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virol. Sep 25, 2020; 9(3): 19-26
Published online Sep 25, 2020. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v9.i3.19
Hypothesis of design of biological cell robot as human immunodeficiency virus vaccine
Yao-Ying Xie, Fan Yang, Xiao-Yu Liao
Yao-Ying Xie, Fan Yang, Xiao-Yu Liao, College of Clinical Medicine, Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities, Tongliao 028000, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China
Author contributions: All the authors contributed equally to this work.
Supported by AIDS Association of Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities, No. IMUN20190908.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no any conflict of interests to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yao-Ying Xie, PhD, Research Fellow, College of Clinical Medicine, Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities, No. 536, Huolinhe Street (West), Tongliao 028000, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. xieyaoying@outlook.com
Received: May 24, 2020
Peer-review started: May 24, 2020
First decision: June 15, 2020
Revised: June 29, 2020
Accepted: August 15, 2020
Article in press: August 15, 2020
Published online: September 25, 2020
Abstract

High genetic variability of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has been a major intractable challenge to the practical design of vaccines. But a recent pioneer study published in PNAS Xenobots, is likely to revolutionize HIV prevention as it presented the world's first living robot made of cells. In the advent of this discovery, we herein discuss the possibility of using living biological cell robots to target HIV-infected T lymphocytes, and the prospects of this approach being a new HIV vaccine. We capture the current research status and trend of advances in biological cell robots' design as a new HIV vaccine. The key differences between this novel vaccine and other HIV vaccines are highlighted.

Keywords: Human immunodeficiency virus, New vaccine, Biologically inspired microrobots, Human immunodeficiency virus target cell surrogate, CD4

Core Tip: In February 2020, the birth of the world's first live-cell robot has brought hope for the artificial design of human live cells. Therefore, herein we propose a hypothesis: Can we artificially design a cell as an alternative target cell for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and use it as a new acquired immune deficiency syndrome vaccine to prevent HIV infection.