Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Wednesday June 9, 1999
Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

The Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center will initially be devoted to the search for an AIDS vaccine, which researchers and activists alike agree is the only real answer to the HIV epidemic.

Cocktails of strong drugs can hold HIV at bay, but no one knows for how long, and they are too expensive for most people. They also have severe side effects. In 1997 Clinton called for the development of an AIDS vaccine by 2007. "Our balanced budget will target $200 million toward this goal," Clinton told an audience packed into a tent at the groundbreaking ceremony. "I am confident that this is a place where miracles will happen -- miracles born of hard work, ceaseless effort, visionary dreams," he added.

"I look forward to the day when I can come back here to a grand facility with, in (broadcaster Edward R.) Murrow's words, 'banners blowing in the breeze and trumpets in the distance' heralding another great vaccine achievement for mankind, the end of AIDS."

AIDS groups welcomed creation of the center, named after a former Arkansas senator who lobbied for immunization programs, being constructed on the sprawling campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda. But they said it would do little good if more money was not set aside for research in the federal budget.

"The president is patting himself on the back, but we say not enough is happening," said Jay Blotcher, a spokesman for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC).

Steve Wakefield of AVAC called for a tax credit to encourage private companies to work on vaccines.

"I believe that industry hasn't made the commitment," Wakefield said. "We don't see the commitment from SmithKline, we don't see the commitment from Merck," he said, naming two giant pharmaceutical companies.

"When the president has wanted something in the past, the White House has called a summit on it. He has made sure that the barriers to that research are removed," he added.

When it is finished next year the center will employ about 100 scientists and support staff. Its budget for fiscal 1999 is $16.5 million.

Around the world, 16,000 people become infected with HIV every day. More than 33 million people are infected and 13.9 million have died from AIDS, most in Africa, where the drugs that can hold the virus at bay are largely unavailable. Experts say the only hope for them is a vaccine.

But efforts to develop a vaccine have been struck by blow after blow. More than 45 are in experimental trials, but it takes many years before a vaccine can be tested in humans. And because HIV infection progresses so slowly, it takes longer to test vaccines for this virus than for something like smallpox.

Only one vaccine is in full-scale global human trials -- AIDSVAX, developed by VaxGen Inc., a California-based company spun off from biotechnology firm Genentech (NYSE:GNE - news).

Experts fear AIDSVAX, which uses a protein from the surface of the virus to try to prime the immune system, will not be strong enough to ward off the virus. Vaccines work better when they use a live but weakened version of a virus -- as in polio, for example -- but monkeys vaccinated with such an attenuated virus ultimately developed symptoms of immune system damage, indicating that even a damaged virus somehow reconstitutes itself to cause infection.
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