WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (AFP) - US researchers have made progress in work on developing an AIDS vaccine that would be effective against a range of strains of HIV, according to an article due out Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The vaccine, still in an early stage of testing, seems able to stimulate the production of antibodies that for the first time stop infection by several strains of HIV, according to the researchers at the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) and Advanced BioScience in Kensington, Maryland.

"This is one of the more exciting findings that I have witnessed in HIV/AIDS research since the early days when it seemed scientific advances were announced regularly," said Dr. Robert Gallo, director of the IHV.

"This has the potential to bring us a major step forward in that ultimate quest: to develop a vaccine that prevents virus infection," Gallo said.

One of the greatest challenges in developing an AIDS vaccine is the diversity of the virus which, like the cold virus, takes on a wide range of incarnations to defy the immune system.

In addition, HIV has a surface protein, gp120, with variable chemical traits, making it tough to develop a vaccine able to generate antibodies that recognize the many forms of this protein.

"The gp120-CD4 complex (under testing) has shown a consistent ability to generate antibodies that neutralize a wide range of HIV-1 isolates. The preliminary findings indicate the gp120-CD4 complex might serve as a useful model for HIV vaccine development," said Anthony Devico, assistant professor at the Institute of Human Virology.

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