The researchers of AIDS are keen on expanding their study of a rare group of HIV-infected people, whose immune systems naturally and mysteriously prevent the virus growing the virus in their bodies.

Scientists have till now concentrated on North America but they are now hoping to rope in people from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Scientists want to uncover the secret behind the robust immune systems of elite controllers and use it to design a vaccine. Elite controllers do not show any signs or symptoms of HIV-related disease and no need for treatment and this is even as late as 10 years after they are infected.

Yu Xu, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, attended an AIDS vaccine conference in Paris and later told Reuters, "The hope is if we know the immune protective mechanism in elite controllers, we can target it for vaccine design".

Researchers are now hoping to piece together a clearer picture of how to design a vaccine that would prevent infection.

Yu’s colleague Mathias Lichterfeld informed during a news conference that controllers appear to have superior dendritic cells which are one of the many other kinds of immune cells, which appear to be a point of access for the AIDS virus.

He added that some of the dendritic cells in the patients have higher activity of certain receptors- molecular doorways in cells. These controllers also seem to be having an unusual and powerful response to HIV in their CD8 T-cells which is another type of immune cell.