AEGiS-Reuters: U.S. sees priority in AIDS vaccine research

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

U.S. sees priority in AIDS vaccine research

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - Tuesday, 12 November 1996.
Grant McCool

NEW YORK (Reuter) - The Clinton Administration is committed to progress in combatting the AIDS epidemic and has made research to develop an AIDS vaccine a priority, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala said Monday. Shalala told reporters at the dedication of new AIDS research laboratories in New York -- the city with the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases in the United States -- that the government wants to reflect the work of scientists worldwide. "A vaccine research ought to be at the top of our priority list and we expect over the next month or so to have some things to say in that area," she said.

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), often transmitted through sexual contact or the use of unsterilized needles in drug injection, can lead to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which is incurable and nearly always fatal.

Shalala gave no other details and declined to discuss her future in the administration, in transition after President Clinton's re-election to a second term Nov. 5. "I have no announcement as to my own plans, as to my own desires until I've had an opportunity to talk to the president," she told a news conference at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, the largest independent AIDS research laboratory in the world.

"The president's commitment is firm both in this country's domestic commitments and its financial commitments, as well as its international commitments on AIDS and we expect to move forward, more collaboratively than we started out," she said.

Last week in Birmingham, England, researchers at the Third International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection said they were encouraged by the performance of a new class of drugs known as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs).

It was the first documented evidence that a new "cocktail" of drugs can eliminate all detectable levels of the AIDS virus from bodily tissues where it is known to hide. The drugs worked as well as the highly touted protease inhibitors, doctors at the Birmingham conference said.

Aaron Diamond Center director David Ho said that "now, instead of having a few relatively weak drugs against HIV, we have 10 retroviral agents. Over the last couple of years we have learned how to combine some of them into potent combinations and those are now achieving a dramatic effect on controlling the replication of the virus and that is beginning to yield real differences for patients."

He said the five new laboratories would allow the center to do more work in molecular retrovirology, immunology and the viral dynamics of HIV as well as increase the team of scientists, researchers and staff to 120 from 70.
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