WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (AFP) - An anti-AIDS vaccine should be on the market in the near future, researchers said Wednesday from a conference gathering thousands of international AIDS specialists in Philadelphia for four days.
"A new generation of promising HIV vaccine candidates is now in human trials in the United States and around the world," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the US National Institutes of Health.
The United States has budgeted some 357 million dollars for fiscal 2002 to develop an effective anti-HIV vaccine, representing more than 60 percent of the NIH's vaccination budget, Fauci noted.
Already the NIH has begun monitoring early-stage clinical trials in the United States, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, where researchers are testing vaccination combinations that have elicited promising immune-system responses -- antibodies that neutralize the virus and cytotoxic cells that kill diseased ones.
California Institute of Technology specialist David Baltimore said a "new optimism" pervaded the international community that a vaccine to guard against the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, "will ultimately be possible, although it will not be available soon."
The prevailing optimism is sustained in part by the emergence of a series of prototypical vaccines against HIV, currently in a preclinical phase ahead of clinical trials on humans.
"A preclinical 'pipeline' of candidate HIV vaccines also has emerged that few would have thought possible ten years ago. I remain optimistic that a safe and effective HIV vaccine will be found that will help slow the pace of the HIV pandemic," Fauci said.
More than 360 studies will be presented at the four-day conference, on topics ranging from the mechanics of vaccination, the latest breakthroughs in research on the virus and the difficulties inherent in establishing a legitimate and efficient course of human clinical trials.
"As with so many other nations in Africa, the greatest threat to Rwanda's social fabric and future prosperity is no longer war or famine but AIDS," said Rwandan President Paul Kagame to open the conference. "In the long term, Rwanda, Africa and the world need an AIDS vaccine."
More than 58 million people have been infected with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome since the pandemic was identified 20 years ago, with 22 million succumbing to the disease. Around 5.3 million people, most of whom live in developing nations, were infected in 2000, according to the most recent statistics published by the United Nations.
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