New monkey model for AIDS offers promise for medical research

HIV-1, the virus responsible for most cases of AIDS, is a very selective virus and does not readily infect species other than its usual hosts -- humans and chimpanzees -- making the search for effective treatments and vaccines for AIDS that much more difficult. In new scientific work, researchers have coaxed a slightly modified form of the HIV-1 virus to not only infect pigtailed macaques, a species of monkey, but to cause full blown AIDS in the primates, a first.