Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - October 16, 2008
Claire Keeton
"It moved the field light years forward...It gave us vital information to build a vaccine, information that we couldn't have gotten any other way," said Susan Buchbinder, from the HIV Research Section at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, supporting human trials.
Buchbinder said: "The importance of clinical trials is that they bring us closer to finding an HIV vaccine."
The mood among more than 900 scientists at the international AIDS Vaccine Conference 2008 this week was optimistic as they shared their ideas for new areas of research and their findings so far.
Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise said: "We have learned a lot from clinical research (trials) on issues nobody could've anticipated. For example, with circumcision we had no clue respondents in a vaccine trial might be affected."
The STEP study suggests that a sub-group of men, who were uncircumcised and had already been exposed to the adenovirus, might be at increased risk of getting HIV.
Bernstein said: "We need to move away from the mindset that a trial does not work if we have no vaccine (at the end of it). The trials are there to interrogate the human immune response to immunogens."
Buchbinder added that AIDS vaccine researchers needed to work collectively as part of the prevention agenda. "We need a toolkit of effective prevention strategies," she said.
Globally more than 16 000 HIV-negative volunteers will soon be taking part in the first round of PrEP trials (pre-exposure prophylaxis, in other words, taking Aids drugs to prevent infection ahead of HIV exposure).
South Africa is one of five countries that have already started testing PrEP among men who have sex with men to prevent infection.
"If they are proven to be effective over the next few years, the drugs would be immediately available but there remain tremendous challenges about who gets it and who would pay," said Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition executive director, Mitchell Warren.
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