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A world first: Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 24 - 09 - 2009


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, AP reported.
The vaccine cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by
more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine
trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand,
researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.
Even though the benefit is modest, «it's the first
evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive
vaccine,» Col. Jerome Kim said in a telephone interview.
He helped lead the study for the U.S. 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 in a telephone interview. «This
is something that we can do.»
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, the U.N. agency UNAIDS
estimates.
«Today marks an 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 analyze and
understand the data, but there is little doubt that this
finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine
field,» he said in a statement.
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 U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown,
scientists stressed.
«This is a scientific breakthrough,» Thai Health
Minister Witthaya Kaewparadai told a news conference in
Bangkok. «For the first time ever there is evidence that
HIV vaccine has preventative efficacy.»
The study actually tested a two-vaccine combo in a
«prime-boost» approach, where 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.
ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can't
cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three
HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically
engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface. The
vaccines are not made from whole virus _ dead or alive _
and cannot cause HIV.
Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when
tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of
scientists had called the new one futile when it began in
2003.
The study was done in Thailand because U.S. Army
scientists did pivotal research in that country when the
AIDS epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and
providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers.
The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of
doing the study.


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