International Struggle to Develop HIV/AIDS Vaccine Continues

By Cheryl Pellerin Staff Writer Washington – The 20-year effort to develop a vaccine that protects against the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) meets more challenges as clinical trials are discontinued and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) rethinks its approach to HIV vaccine design and development. NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced in September 2007 that it would discontinue two HIV vaccine clinical trials. On July 17, it announced it will not move forward with a vaccine clinical trial called PAVE 100 that would have enrolled 8,500 volunteers in the United States, South America, the Caribbean and eastern and southern Africa. “If there is one area of the science of HIV that is still quite problematic, that has to do with vaccines,” NIAID Director... [read full story]