The AIDS virus is especially hard to fight because few people develop antibodies to neutralize it, but U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have found an immunity gene that may offer a new way to fight back.

They said the gene Apobec3 helps mice develop antibodies against an HIV-like virus, and they think the same gene in humans could lead to a potent vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.

"This gene is central to HIV biology," Dr. Warner Greene of the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview.

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