Trial of new AIDS vaccine bites the dust

Plans to conduct a large-scale human trial of an experimental HIV/AIDS vaccine in the United States have bitten the dust. The trial called PAVE 100 has been abandoned following advice from a top scientist that it was unlikely to give useful results. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) the trial which would have involved 2,400 men in the U.S., was cancelled because of cost and also because of its similarity to a failed Merck product. Like the Merck vaccine the latest one relied on a version of a common cold virus to trigger a response from the immune system to keep the HIV infection in check rather than prevent infection. The new vaccine was developed by the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci rejected the plan and called for a... [read full story]