Thailand Weighs AIDS Vaccine Tests

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Thailand Weighs AIDS Vaccine Tests

Science (11/10/95) Vol. 270, No. 5238, P. 904
Cohen, Jon

Thailand is emerging as the most important AIDS vaccine test- site in the world. "There's probably more going on here than anywhere," notes epidemiologist William Heyward of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the coming years, tests and research in Thailand could help determine the efficacy of first-generation vaccines, as well as settle some scientific debates over how best to proceed with vaccine development. Currently, no definite plans are in action to stage large-scale efficacy trials in the southeast Asian country, but teams of Thai researchers and scientists from two San Francisco-area companies--Genentech and Biocine--are laying the foundations for such work. Thailand has become the focus of HIV vaccine research, in part, because of its large, growing number of infections. Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Kenrad Nelson, a principal investigator of an NIH-funded team that is helping prepare Thailand for AIDS vaccine efficacy trials, feels that Thai decision-makers are much less capricious than those in the United States. "If [the Thais] decide to study something, they carry through," Nelson explains. In addition, Thailand offers a relatively stable government, a long history of staging collaborative vaccine efficacy trials with the West, and an educated and culturally homogenous population.

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