Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection

BANGKOK – For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organisation and the UN agency Unaids said the results ‘instilled new hope’ in the field of HIV vaccine research.The vaccine – a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines – cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 per cent in the world’s largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16 000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced yesterday in Bangkok.Even though the benefit is modest, ‘it’s the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine,’ Colonel Jerome Kim told The Associated Press. He helped lead the study for the US Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.The institute’s director, Dr Anthony Fauci, warned that this is ‘not the end of the road,’ but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.’It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result’ and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said. ‘This is something that we can do.’The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the US, Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed.Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7 500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of AIDS in 2007, Unaids estimates.’Today marks a historic milestone,’ said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine.’It will take time and resources to fully analyse and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energise and redirect the AIDS vaccine field,’ he said in a statement.The study tested the two-vaccine combination in a ‘prime-boost’ approach, in which the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.Details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October. – Nampa-AP