**13. Conclusion**

There is great need for a prophylactic HIV-1 vaccination to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV-1 immunology and vaccine development remain a uniquely challenging field. This is for multiple factors: complex immune mechanisms, rapid mutation of the viral variants, establishment of the latent reservoir early in infection, no predictive animal models or natural immune correlates, and only one efficacious clinical vaccine trial with RV144 in 2009 with numerous failed trials. Despite these factors, the field has made great strides, particularly through the study of categorization of immune responses and characterization of broadly neutralizing antibodies (BnAbs). This progress has led to multiple promising vaccine candidates in various stages of development, namely, SOSIP trimers, eOD-GT8 60mer and gene therapy, HIVcons immunogens, and mosaic immunogens.
