Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters newMedia - Monday November 12, 2001
Louis Charbonneau

Dr. Boris Ferko, a member of the Austrian research team, said laboratory mice inoculated with flu viruses laced with material from the HIV/AIDS virus exhibited a significant anti-HIV immunity response.

The material in the flu virus appeared to function as an antigen, a substance alien to the body capable of stimulating an immune response. The details of the institute's study were published in the October 2001 issue of the Journal of Virology.

"The mice appeared to develop an immunity to the HIV virus after getting the modified influenza," Ferko told Reuters on Friday.

There is currently no vaccine for HIV, which has infected an estimated 36 million people worldwide and left 22 million dead from AIDS since 1981. While more than 90 potential vaccines have reached the human trial stage, it remains to be seen whether any of the candidates will prove effective in preventing HIV infection.

Ferko is optimistic and believes there will be a functioning HIV vaccine for humans in the not-too-distant future.

"We think that recombinant influenza viruses are a promising vaccine candidate to help prevent or control various infectious diseases such as HIV," Ferko said, adding that such a vaccine would be perfectly safe. Recombinant viruses are ones that have been genetically altered from the parent viruses. Their genes have been literally recombined to form a new genetic pattern.

HIV has proven especially difficult for vaccine developers because it is an elusive, constantly mutating virus that misleads and systemically destroys the human immune system.

While the research is a good beginning, Ferko said his team had a lot of work to do before they had a flu-based HIV vaccine that could be administered as a routine jab to humans.

The next step in Ferko's research will be to immunize mice with the recombinant influenza/HIV viruses. Afterwards, the mice will be tested with pathogenic, or disease-causing, HIV viruses.

If the mice prove resistant, they will test the vaccine out on a primate. If the vaccine works on primate subjects, Ferko and his colleagues will set to work on producing a human vaccine.

"It could work," said Ferko, adding that the institute hoped to take part in a European Union funded HIV research program with their modified-flu HIV vaccine.

He said that if all went well, the HIV vaccine could be ready for human trials within a year.
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