Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Tuesday July 13, 1999
They said they could not tell whether the vaccines were actually preventing infection but said more than 400 volunteers had shown no serious side-effects from the injections and their bodies were mounting the expected protective response against the HIV virus.
Men and women at 14 sites across the United States are getting the dual vaccine, which includes one called ALVAC vCP205 made by Rhone-Poulenc ( (NYSE:RP - news)) subsidiary Pasteur Merieux Connaught, and another called SF-2 rgp120, made by Chiron (Nasdaq:CHIR - news) of Emeryville, California.
The ALVAC vaccine is based on a canarypox virus, which does not cause disease in humans and which has been genetically engineered to carry three genes from HIV. The second vaccine uses a protein from the surface of HIV called gp120. Both are designed to provide pieces of the virus for the immune system to recognize and mount a response against.
Most of the volunteers are considered at high risk of HIV infection because they inject drugs or engage in unprotected sex with other people at high risk. Dr. Robert Belshe of St. Louis University said half the volunteers who got ALVAC alone, and 90 percent of those who got both vaccines, developed antibodies that should slow down or stop HIV.
He told a meeting of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research in Denver that his team was not able to check whether any of the volunteers actually avoided infection because of the vaccine.
But he said 11 of the 435 became infected -- six of those who got placebo or dummy vaccine, three who got the ALVAC vaccine alone and two who got the combination.
"The current study adds compelling new evidence that large-scale efficacy trials using these or similar vaccines are feasible in communities at risk," the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, which helped sponsor the study, said in a statement.
More information about AIDS vaccine trials is available at www.actis.org.
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