AIDS Vaccine Possible Before End Of This Decade, HIV Scientist Says

A vaccine to protect against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and AIDS may be available before the end of this decade, a leading HIV research scientist says. RV144 may be the answer to fighting HIV/AIDS.

“We’re really working as fast as we can,” said Colonel Nelson Michael, director of the U.S. Military HIV Research Program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, “who expects large-scale effectiveness studies to start in 2016,” according to a report inReuters:

The hope is to have at least 50 percent effectiveness, a level that mathematical modelers say could have a major impact on the epidemic. Michael thinks this might be the pathway for getting the first HIV vaccine licensed, possibly by 2019.

Teams have been working on a vaccine for nearly three decades, but it wasn’t until RV144, the 2009 clinical trial involving more than 16,000 adults in Thailand, that researchers achieved any hint of success.

Results of the study published in 2009 showed the vaccine combination cut HIV infections by 31.2 percent. According to Michael and many other experts, the result was not big enough to be considered effective, but its impact on researchers was huge, says Wayne Koff, chief scientific officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) based in New York.