An experimental AIDS vaccine made from two failed products has protected people for the first time, reducing the rate of infection by about 30 percent, researchers said on Thursday.
Developers said they were now debating how to test the limited amounts of vaccine they have left to find out if there are ways to make it work better.
Scientists said they were unsure how or why the vaccines worked when used together in the trial, which took place in Thailand, and will study the volunteers to find out.
All agreed that a commercial product would be years away, but the WHO said the result created new hope that an effective vaccine would eventually be found.
“The result of the study is a very important step for developing an AIDS vaccine,” Thai Health Minister Withaya Kaewparadai told a news conference in Bangkok. “It’s the first time in the world that we have found a vaccine that can prevent HIV infection.”
Activists and researchers alike were thrilled.
“The outcome is very exciting news and a significant scientific achievement,” said Seth Berkley, chief executive officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which was not involved in this study. “It’s the first demonstration that a candidate AIDS vaccine provides benefit in humans.”
The vaccine is a combination of Sanofi-Pasteur’s ALVAC canary pox/HIV vaccine and the failed HIV vaccine AIDSVAX, made by a San Francisco firm called VaxGen and now owned by the nonprofit Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases.
The trial was sponsored by the US government and conducted by the Thai Ministry of Public Health. It cut the risk of infection by 31.2 percent among 16,402 volunteers over three years.
“We had 74 infections in the placebo group and 51 in the vaccine group,” said Jerome Kim, a US colonel at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, who helped lead the trial.
The results were a triumph for supporters, who went ahead with the giant trial despite criticism it was unethical or a waste of money because the vaccine was widely expected to have no effect.
The AIDS virus infects an estimated 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million since it was identified in the 1980s. It affects immune cells called T-cells.
Cocktails of drugs can control HIV but there is no cure. In 2007, Merck ended a trial of its vaccine after it was found not to work, and in 2003, AIDSVAX used alone was found to offer no protection.
The WHO and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS stressed the effects of the vaccine in the Thailand test were modest.
“However, these results have instilled new hope in the HIV vaccine research field and promise that a safe and highly effective HIV vaccine may become available for populations throughout the world who are most in need of such a vaccine,” they said.
“What is needed here is more in-depth analysis,” Sanofi’s Jim Tartaglia told a briefing.
Donald Francis of Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases said the companies had limited amounts of vaccine left to test and would have to make more.
“For me the biggest question is, how do you take what we know of this vaccine and give it greater protective power. Once you know that, then it makes sense to go to other parts of a population,” Sanofi’s Chris Viehbacher said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS