AEGiS-WSJ: Researchers Push to Create Project for an AIDS Vaccine

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Researchers Push to Create Project for an AIDS Vaccine

Wall Street Journal - June 27, 2003
Marilyn Chase and David Bank, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

Two dozen AIDS researchers and public-health officials, citing the lack of a vaccine two decades into the pandemic, are calling for the creation of a global HIV vaccine enterprise, adding that it is "unrealistic" to expect private industry to shoulder the burden alone.

The policy statement, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, is signed by top officials of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United Nations' and World Health Organization's AIDS groups, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, international research institutions, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and two Nobel laureates. "A well-coordinated global enterprise necessary to drive this scientific effort does not exist and must be created," the authors say, adding that "reliance on industry to carry the major load for discovery and development for HIV vaccines is unrealistic."

Currently, 42 million people world-wide live with AIDS. If AIDS grows at its current pace without a vaccine, scientists said they expect 45 million new infections by 2010 and nearly 70 million deaths by 2020.

Researchers have failed to come up with an effective vaccine. In 2001 and 2002, only seven new vaccine candidates entered clinical trials. One product, VaxGen Inc.'s gp120 vaccine, has progressed to Phase III studies, but this year the company reported it failed to prevent new infections overall. Vaccine development is saddled with high costs ranging from $200 million to $600 million, high risk of failure, and uncertain markets in developing countries that are hardest hit. The Gates Foundation expects to provide funding, but it is too early to say how much, said Richard Klausner, director of global health for the foundation, which has $24 billion in assets. An AIDS vaccine is "the single most important technical advance the world can make for global health," he said.

What is needed now is an "integrated global clinical-trial system" to identify, make and test all promising vaccines, report successes and failures instantly, and avoid duplicated efforts, said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"In some ways, this is a 'big science' effort like the human-genome project," said co-author Gary J. Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at NIH in Bethesda, Md. But it would go beyond discovery to development and distribution.

Merits of a "Manhattan Project" for AIDS have been weighed since the crisis erupted in the 1980s. But researchers said the difference now is it is moving beyond discussion and into action. An element is the expectation of "catalytic" funding by the Gates Foundation, and the drive of its creator, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, to develop a product. "Government is good at directing the research pathway, and [Gates] is good at driving the product pathway," VaxGen President Donald Francis said.

Separately, the United Nations said global AIDS funding of $4.7 billion from all sources to fight the epidemic this year in low- and middle-income countries is less than half the $10.5 billion a year needed by 2005 for a "barebones" package of prevention and treatment.

Write to Marilyn Chase at Marilyn.Chase@wsj.com and David Bank at david.bank@wsj.com

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